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Full-Text Articles in Sign Languages

Exploring Strategies For Modeling Sign Language Phonology, Lee Kezar, Riley Carlin, Tejas Srinivasan, Zed Sehyr, Naomi Caselli, Jesse Thomason Oct 2023

Exploring Strategies For Modeling Sign Language Phonology, Lee Kezar, Riley Carlin, Tejas Srinivasan, Zed Sehyr, Naomi Caselli, Jesse Thomason

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Like speech, signs are composed of discrete, recombinable features called phonemes. Prior work shows that models which can recognize phonemes are better at sign recognition, motivating deeper exploration into strategies for modeling sign language phonemes. In this work, we learn graph convolution networks to recognize the sixteen phoneme “types” found in ASL-LEX 2.0. Specifically, we explore how learning strategies like multi-task and curriculum learning can leverage mutually useful information between phoneme types to facilitate better modeling of sign language phonemes. Results on the Sem-Lex Benchmark show that curriculum learning yields an average accuracy of 87% across all phoneme types, outperforming …


Working With Deaf Children In Healthcare Settings, Maria E. Lombardi Sep 2023

Working With Deaf Children In Healthcare Settings, Maria E. Lombardi

JADARA

Effective and efficient health care is greatly influenced by communication between patient and provider. Federal laws require the use of a sign language interpreter (SLI) or other appropriate accommodations to ensure effective communication within the health care system for deaf children. Specialized training and certifications are available for SLIs choosing to specialize in the health care field. The training is typically geared toward SLIs working with adults rather than children. In addition, very few studies focus on the use of SLIs for children within health care settings. SLIs bring unique perspectives to their respective settings when referencing one’s skill set. …


Asymmetric Event-Related Potential Priming Effects Between English Letters And American Sign Language Fingerspelling Fonts, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Katherine J. Midgley, Karen Emmory, Phillip J. Holcomb Jun 2023

Asymmetric Event-Related Potential Priming Effects Between English Letters And American Sign Language Fingerspelling Fonts, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr, Katherine J. Midgley, Karen Emmory, Phillip J. Holcomb

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Letter recognition plays an important role in reading and follows different phases of processing, from early visual feature detection to the access of abstract letter representations. Deaf ASL–English bilinguals experience orthography in two forms: English letters and fingerspelling. However, the neurobiological nature of fingerspelling representations, and the relationship between the two orthographies, remains unexplored. We examined the temporal dynamics of single English letter and ASL fingerspelling font processing in an unmasked priming paradigm with centrally presented targets for 200 ms preceded by 100 ms primes. Event-related brain potentials were recorded while participants performed a probe detection task. Experiment 1 examined …


Improving Sign Recognition With Phonology, Lee Kezar, Jesse Thomason, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr May 2023

Improving Sign Recognition With Phonology, Lee Kezar, Jesse Thomason, Zed Sevcikova Sehyr

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

We use insights from research on American Sign Language (ASL) phonology to train models for isolated sign language recognition (ISLR), a step towards automatic sign language understanding. Our key insight is to explicitly recognize the role of phonology in sign production to achieve more accurate ISLR than existing work which does not consider sign language phonology. We train ISLR models that take in pose estimations of a signer producing a single sign to predict not only the sign but additionally its phonological characteristics, such as the handshape. These auxiliary predictions lead to a nearly 9% absolute gain in sign recognition …


The Success In Creating An International Perspective On Sign Language Policy, Beverly Buchanan Apr 2023

The Success In Creating An International Perspective On Sign Language Policy, Beverly Buchanan

Society for American Sign Language Journal

No abstract provided.


Are There Really Deaf People Who Are Languageless?, Kristin Snoddon Apr 2023

Are There Really Deaf People Who Are Languageless?, Kristin Snoddon

Society for American Sign Language Journal

No abstract provided.


Cultural Insights On The First School Building For Deaf Children In Belleville, Ontario, Canada, 1870-1922, Clifton F. Carbin, Dana J. Fano Apr 2023

Cultural Insights On The First School Building For Deaf Children In Belleville, Ontario, Canada, 1870-1922, Clifton F. Carbin, Dana J. Fano

Society for American Sign Language Journal

No abstract provided.


Gaining Insights Into Signed Music Through Performers, Pamela E. Witcher, Jody Cripps, Hodan Youssouf Apr 2023

Gaining Insights Into Signed Music Through Performers, Pamela E. Witcher, Jody Cripps, Hodan Youssouf

Society for American Sign Language Journal

Signed music is best described as an inter-performative art form that combines lyrical and non-lyrical musical performances and is deeply rooted in the culture of deaf people who communicate through signed language (J. H. Cripps & Lyonblum, 2017; J. H. Cripps et al., in press [a]). The key investigative component for this article includes outlining the experiences that three Canadian performers had about their signed music creativity during a plenary at the Partition/Ensemble 2020 Conference held by the Canadian Association for Theatre Research in Montreal, Quebec. The panelists responded to two questions that they developed for themselves: What inspired us …


Volume 5, Issue 2, Full Issue Apr 2023

Volume 5, Issue 2, Full Issue

Society for American Sign Language Journal

No abstract provided.


American Sign Language (Asl): Linguistically And Cognitively - Why Deaf People Should Learn Asl & Learn It Early, Helena Isabel Berczes Jan 2023

American Sign Language (Asl): Linguistically And Cognitively - Why Deaf People Should Learn Asl & Learn It Early, Helena Isabel Berczes

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis presents data supporting the value of including American Sign Language (ASL) in the education of Deaf people. Historically, Deaf education has not fully included or has excluded ASL in an effort to focus on English due to a belief that ASL hinders learning English. ASL must fit within the definition of language with unique linguistic features for its inclusion in language education. Plasticity of the brain lends itself to the ability for language processing networks to form based on language experience. Deaf people can fully access visual language versus auditory language. Therefore, acquiring ASL early in life, during …