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Over the past 20+ years, researchers have worked toward identifying early behavioral predictors of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and developing observation-based screeners to supplement existing parent-report methods. This study is a follow-up, 3 to 8 years later, with parents/caregivers of 57 children previously enrolled in a U.S. university-based study evaluating early ASD-risk. The original study evaluated infants' (ages 15–35 months) ASD-risk through both observation-based and parent-report screeners. At follow-up, caregivers completed a phone interview inquiring about their child's developmental progress and diagnostic outcomes. Results indicated screener at-risk status agreement in infancy predicted only one of the four parent-reported ASD diagnoses at follow-up. Single instrument at-risk status aligned with two additional ASD diagnoses (one per screener), and both screeners missed one ASD diagnosis at follow-up. Results did not indicate significant added utility for the observation-based screener over the commonly used parent-report screener, suggesting that ASD behavioral markers may be hard to observe at early ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL) by deaf autistic children has documented similarities to the linguistic profile of hearing children on the autism spectrum and has identified sign-specific phenomena that could serve as clinical markers of autism in the deaf population. However, the acquisition of a signed language by deaf autistic individuals whose language use appears to be at age-level is not well documented. Here we present a case study of ASL use by a Deaf autistic adolescent exposed to ASL since birth. Data include two video recordings (collected at age 16;11 and 17;4 years) of his spontaneous ASL. Utterances were coded for repetitions, phonological form, fingerspelling, metalinguistic awareness, and facial expressions having grammatical functions. Other data include a writing sample (17;6) and background information obtained from parental interviews and formal psycho-educational evaluations (between ages 14 and 17). Results revealed this adolescent has strong ASL skills including sophisticated vocabulary and semantic content, advanced fingerspelling, and evidence of metalinguistic awareness. His distinctive signing patterns include abundant repetition of phrases, intrusion of non-ASL handshapes, articulation disfluency, reduced facial expressiveness, and a dissociation between fingerspelling and writing skills. The results of this study diversify and broaden discussions of the ways that autism may interact with language development, especially in the visual-gestural modality. Understanding language patterns in autistic signers more fully will improve identification of autism in the deaf population, promote acceptance of diverse signing patterns in the Deaf community, and lead to better support for this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the case of a deaf native signer of American Sign Language (ASL) with a specific language impairment (SLI). School records documented normal cognitive development but atypical language development. Data include school records; interviews with the child, his mother, and school professionals; ASL and English evaluations; and a comprehensive neuropsychological and psychoeducational evaluation, and they span an approximate period of 7.5 years (11;10-19;6) including scores from school records (11;10-16;5) and a 3.5-year period (15;10-19;6) during which we collected linguistic and neuropsychological data. Results revealed that this student has average intelligence, intact visual perceptual skills, visuospatial skills, and motor skills but demonstrates challenges with some memory and sequential processing tasks. Scores from ASL testing signaled language impairment and marked difficulty with fingerspelling. The student also had significant deficits in English vocabulary, spelling, reading comprehension, reading fluency, and writing. Accepted SLI diagnostic criteria exclude deaf individuals from an SLI diagnosis, but the authors propose modified criteria in this work. The results of this study have practical implications for professionals including school psychologists, speech language pathologists, and ASL specialists. The results also support the theoretical argument that SLI can be evident regardless of the modality in which it is communicated.

Purpose: This study focused on whether developmental communication disorders exist in American Sign Language (ASL) and how they might be characterized. ASL studies is an emerging field; educators and clinicians have minimal access to descriptions of communication disorders of the signed modality. Additionally, there are limited resources for assessing ASL acquisition. This article is designed to raise clinicians' awareness about developmental communication disorders in ASL and categorize types of atypicality that have been witnessed. Method: We conducted 4 focus groups and one 1-on-1 interview with a total of 22 adults (7 Deaf, 15 hearing) who work at bilingual-bicultural (ASL-English) schools for the Deaf. Experiences of these educators and language professionals were analyzed qualitatively using a combination of grounded theory (Charmaz, 2001; Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and a modified van Kaam approach (Moustakas, 1994). Results: Participants confirmed observations of children with suspected communication disorders and considered the prevalence, possible etiologies, and psychosocial aspects of such disorders in ASL. They reported frustration at the lack of diagnostic tools for reliable identification and intervention strategies to be used in educational settings. Conclusion: This work provides us with practitioner accounts proving that developmental communication disorders do exist in ASL. Future reports will describe primary data from signers with atypical language attributes.

The present study examines the impact of highly inconsistent input on language acquisition. The American deaf community provides a unique opportunity to observe children exposed to nonnative language models as their only linguistic input. This research is a detailed case study of one child acquiring his native language in such circumstances. It asks whether this child is capable of organizing a natural language out of input data that are not representative of certain natural language principles. Simon is a deaf child whose deaf parents both learned American Sign Language (ASL) after age 15. Simon's only ASL input is provided by his late-learner parents. The study examines Simon's performance at age 7 on an ASL morphology task, compared with eight children who have native signing parents, and also compared with Simon's own parents. The results show that Simon's production of ASL substantially surpasses that of his parents. Simon's parents, like other late learners of ASL, perform below adult native signing criteria, with many inconsistencies and errors in their use of ASL morphology. In contrast, Simon's performance is much more regular, and in fact on most ASL morphemes is equal to that of children exposed to a native signing model. The results thus indicate that Simon is capable of acquiring a regular and orderly morphological rule system for which his input provides only highly inconsistent and noisy data. In addition, the results provide some insight into the mechanisms by which such learning may occur. Although the ASL situation is rare, it reveals clues that may contribute to our understanding of the human capacity for language learning.

The written English vocabulary of 72 deaf elementary school students of various proficiency levels in American Sign Language (ASL) was compared with the performance of 60 hearing English-as-a-second-language (ESL) speakers and 61 hearing monolingual speakers of English, all of similar age. Students were asked to retell "The Tortoise and the Hare" story (previously viewed on video) in a writing activity. Writing samples were later scored for total number of words, use of words known to be highly frequent in children's writing, redundancy in writing, and use of English function words. All deaf writers showed significantly lower use of function words as compared to their hearing peers. Low-ASL proficient students demonstrated a highly formulaic writing style, drawing mostly on high-frequency words and repetitive use of a limited range of function words. The moderate- and high-ASL-proficient deaf students' writing was not formulaic and incorporated novel, low-frequency vocabulary to communicate their thoughts. The moderate- and high-ASL students' performance revealed a departure from findings one might expect based on previous studies with deaf writers and their vocabulary use. The writing of the deaf writers also differed from the writing of hearing ESL speakers. Implications for deaf education and literacy instruction are discussed, with special attention to the fact that ASL-proficient, deaf second-language learners of English may be approaching English vocabulary acquisition in ways that are different from hearing ESL learners.

Critically examines the traditional notion of American Sign Language/English bilingualism. This model is contrasted with the "ASL/English as a spoken language" bilingual model in which the modality constraints facing the deaf child are presented as the fundamental issue for ASL/English bilingualism. Empirical and applied research supporting the modality constrained bilingual model is offered. (Author/DB)

Gaze following plays a role in parent–infant communication and is a key mechanism by which infants acquire information about the world from social input. Gaze following in Deaf infants has been understudied. Twelve Deaf infants of Deaf parents (DoD) who had native exposure to American Sign Language (ASL) were gender‐matched and age‐matched (±7 days) to 60 spoken‐language hearing control infants. Results showed that the DoD infants had significantly higher gaze‐following scores than the hearing infants. We hypothesize that in the absence of auditory input, and with support from ASL‐fluent Deaf parents, infants become attuned to visual‐communicative signals from other people, which engenders increased gaze following. These findings underscore the need to revise the 'deficit model' of deafness. Deaf infants immersed in natural sign language from birth are better at understanding the signals and identifying the referential meaning of adults' gaze behavior compared to hearing infants not exposed to sign language. Broader implications for theories of social‐cognitive development are discussed. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/QXCDK_CUmAI [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Technology holds great potential to support Deaf individuals as they age into older adulthood. However, it is unclear to what extent Deaf seniors are using technology in everyday life or whether they experience challenges in using technology. The current study explored technology use among older Deaf adults with regard to attitudes, adoption style, and frequency of use for a wide range of technologies, including assistive technologies (ATs) for persons with hearing loss and general, everyday technologies. Materials and methods: We developed a questionnaire that assessed older Deaf adults' use of and experiences with technology. The questionnaire was made available in online and paper versions. Participants (N = 109) were recruited from national conferences and organizations for the Deaf. Results: Overall, we found that the older Deaf adults were technology adopters and regularly use and feel comfortable with a variety of devices. However, we also identified a number of technologies that are not being used by this population, including an AT that appears to have become obsolete and technologies that use sound-based alerts. Conclusions: Insights on how older Deaf adults are embracing technology and which devices they are actually using can help policy makers, technology developers, and a range of aging services professionals, better meet the needs of this understudied population. Older Deaf adults use a variety of assistive and everyday technologies and must be considered as consumers and included in the design process. Older Deaf adults are generally positive in their attitudes towards technologies but they are infrequent users of potentially beneficial health technologies, highlighting opportunities for future research and development. Assistive technology for the Deaf (TTY/TTD) appears to have become obsolete with advances in modern communication technologies, which has implications for policy decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]