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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1979

A study of timing in a manual and a spoken language: American sign language and English.

A comparative analysis of the time variables in the production of speech and sign reveals that signers modify their global physical rate primarily by altering the time they spend articulating, whereas speakers do so by chaning the time they spend pausing. When signers increase or decrease their pause time, however little they do so, they alter the number and the length of the pauses equally, whereas speakers primarily alter the number of pauses and leave their pause durations relatively constant. An analysis of the durations of signs reveals that signs are longer at the end of sentences than within sentences and that the first occurrence of a sign is longer than the second when syntactic location is controlled (both these findings have already been reported for spoken language). The inherent duration of a sign can be accounted for almost totally by the movement characteristic; handshape, location, and number of hands in a sign are of little importance. Finally, signers retain their regular "quiet-breathing" respiratory pattern across signing rates and inhale at locations independent of syntactic importance. In this they are quite unlike speakers, who breathe at syntactic breaks.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Sign language aphasia in a non-deaf-mute.

A 19-year-old left-handed man, who was raised by deaf-mute parents and learned sign language concurrently with normal speech, sustained a traumatic cerebral contusion. He subsequently had no evidence of apraxic, visual-spatial, or sensorimotor deficits of the left limbs with which he was accustomed to use signs. Globally aphasic with a dense right hemiparesis, he initially recovered sign language to a greater degree than spoken language with a reversal on follow-up observations. Receptive skills improved to a greater degree than expressive skills with no marked difference between verbal and sign language, but with natural signs better preserved than finger spelling.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Image processing system for interpreting motion in American Sign Language.

In this paper, an image processing algorithm is presented for the interpretation of the American Sign Language (ASL), which is one of the sign languages used by the majority of the deaf community. The process involves detection of hand motion, tracking the hand location based on the motion and classification of signs using adaptive clustering of stop positions, simple shape of the trajectory, and matching of the hand shape at the stop position.

Algorithms↗
PubMed1977

Acquisition of modified American sign language by a mute autistic child.

An attempt was made to teach a modified version of American Sign Language to mute 5-year-old boy who had been diagnosed autistic and who had a Merrill-Palmer IQ of 65. Previous attempts to teach imitative spoken language had failed, and baseline data indicated that the child's signing vocabulary was also nonexistent. Data were collected during 20 structured sessions involving presentation of stimuli, prompting and manual guidance when necessary, and reinforcement. Continuous use of signs as communication in class and at home was emphasized. The child had mastered 12 signs at the end of the study. Spontaneous signing frequency as recorded by parents and teachers during several 48 hour periods rose from 15 to 42 emitted signs over the 3 months of the study. The child made 6 months' developmental progress during this time, as measured by a sign-language adaptation of the Alpern-Boll Communication Scale. However, the child made no apparent progress in acquiring spoken language.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed1992

Acquisition of signs from American sign language in hearing individuals following left hemisphere damage and aphasia.

Three severely aphasic hearing patients with no prior knowledge of sign language were able to acquire competency in aspects of American Sign Language (ASL) lexicon and finger spelling, in contrast to a near complete inability to speak the English counterparts of these visuo-gestural signs. Two patients with damage in left postero-lateral temporal and inferior parietal cortices mastered production and comprehension of single signs and short meaningful sign sequences, but the one patient with damage to virtually all left temporal cortices was less accurate in single sign processing and was unable to produce sequences of signs at all. These findings suggest that conceptual knowledge is represented independently of the auditory-vocal records for the corresponding lexical entries, and that left anterior temporal cortices outside of traditional "language areas" are part of the neural network which supports the linkage between conceptual knowledge and linguistic signs, especially as they are used in the sequenced activations required for production or comprehension of meaningful sentences.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

The acquisition of question formation in spoken English and American sign language by two hearing children of deaf parents.

This longitudinal study investigated the acquisition of question formation in spoken English and American Sign Language (ASL) by two young hearing children of deaf parents. The linguistic environment of the children included varying amounts of exposure and interaction with normal speech and with the nonstandard speech of their deaf parents. This atypical speech environment did not impede the children's acquisition of English question forms. The two children also acquired question forms in ASL that are similar to those produced by deaf children of deaf parents. The two languages, ASL and English, developed in parallel fashion in the two children, and the two systems did not interfere with each other. This dual language development is illustrated by utterances in which the children communicated a sentence in spoken English and ASL simultaneously, with normal English structure in the spoken version and sign language structure in the ASL version.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1978

Acquisition of sign language by autistic children. I: Expressive labelling.

There has been growing interest in teaching sign language to autistic children who have failed to develop speech. However, controlled experimentation in this area is nonexistent. In the present study, four nonverbal autistic children were taught expressive sign labels for common objects, using a training procedure that consisted of prompting, fading, and stimulus rotation. The efficacy of the procedure was demonstrated in a multiple-baseline design across objects. The results were reliable, replicable across children, and generalizable across therapists. A stimulus control analysis demonstrated that, for three of the children, correct signing was controlled solely by the visual cues associated with the presentation of a given object and was independent of respect to the known perceptual and linguistic deficits of autistic children.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1976

Sign language acquisition in a mute autistic boy.

A mute autistic boy learned to communicate extensively through American Sign Language. Over a six-month period he produced many spontaneous signs and sign combinations, and analyses of child's sign combinations indicated the presence of a full range of semantic relations. Further evidence of conceptual progress was provided by the child's increased score on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. In addition, parents' and teacher's reports indicated that the child's social behavior improved. The extent of the boy's linguistic progress and associated improvement in social behavior markedly exceeds that usually reported for mute autistic children.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed1979

Teaching autistic children to use sign language: some research issues.

Three questions are raised with respect to the use of sign language as an alternative system of communication for nonverbal autistic children. First, does teaching a child to sign facilitate speech development? The data suggest that following simultaneous communication training, mute children are not likely to learn to talk; however, a combination of simultaneous communication training and separate vocal training may have a synergetic effect on speech development. In contrast, children who initially have good verbal imitation skills apparently show gains in speech following simultaneous communication training alone. Second, what is the upper limit of sign acquisition? Data suggest that abstract concepts, syntax, and generative skills can be taught. Procedures used in the operant conditioning of speech may prove useful in training complex signing skills. Third, does sign acquisition result in a general improvement in adaptive functioning? It appears that following sign training, some children do show increases in spontaneous communication, decreases in self-stimulatory behavior, and improvement in social skills. However, these outcomes are often difficult to interpret. Some data are described that help clarify the relationship between sign training and general behavioral improvement.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1976

Acquisition of American sign language by a noncommunicating autistic child.

Experiments in the perception and language abilities of autistic children indicate that the children have auditory-visual association problems. These findings, combined with the findings that autistic communication is primarily gestural, led to the teaching of elements of American Sign Language to a 5-year-old nonverbal autistic boy. Results after 20 hours of training indicate that the child did acquire signs, that increasing signing led to increasing vocal speech, and that the child has rudimentary English syntax. The use of Ameslan signs spontaneously generalized to other situations and the training resulted in increased social interaction.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed1978

Sign codes and sign language: two orders of communication.

Deaf children, like all children, are born with a capacity for language; i.e. the symbolization and expression of cognitive functioning. Until the age at which hearing children are talking, deaf children communicate well with others, using their sight, touch, and other actions--the common gestures in the culture of their caretakers. The chief problem in communication arises when hearers reject the deaf child's gestural symbolization of his developing language knowledge. The problem is aggravated by insistence that the child use speech as do those who hear. Linguistic, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral problems may then follow, because of the attitude and actions of the hearing. All these problems can be resolved by early recognizing that the deaf person has a language and by honestly trying to learn and use it. This language is not a set of signs standing for spoken words but a complete language with its own rules for making sense in signed sentences.

Child↗