American Sign Language Commons^™

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

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

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

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

Society for American Sign Language Journal

No abstract provided.

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

Society for American Sign Language Journal

No abstract provided.

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

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

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 …

Deaf Accessibility In The Christian Church, Madison Finley

Honors Projects

Around the globe, only two percent of Deaf people have had the opportunity to be introduced to the Gospel. Religious accessibility is limited for individuals who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. This paper begins to investigate:

• How can Christian churches increase accessibility to religion, worship, and other programs for Deaf individuals?

My Honors Project activity is preparing research and materials for a physical guide booklet for Christian churches that do not currently offer any Deaf ministries or American Sign Language interpretation or that may be seeking to increase accessibility for Deaf individuals. The primary purpose of this project is to create …

Afterword: Some Thoughts From The Former School Superintendent, Paul S. Bartu

Society for American Sign Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Wartime Emergency And The Education Of Deaf Children, 1941–1944, Clifton F. Carbin, Donna J. Fano

Society for American Sign Language Journal

According to historical accounts, three Canadian schools for deaf children temporarily vacated their premises during World War II (1939–1945). Under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, the Manitoba School for the Deaf in Winnipeg was the third wireless school site for the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), from February 17, 1941, to December 31, 1944. In Vancouver, British Columbia, the RCAF took over the grounds of Jericho Hill School for the Deaf, which was in proximity to the RCAF Station Jericho Beach, from early 1942 to December 1945. And the Ontario School for the Deaf (OSD) in Belleville was home …

John Barrett Mcgann, Pioneer In Canadian Deaf Education, Clifton F. Carbin, Donna J. Fano

Society for American Sign Language Journal

This article1 is one of several sesquicentennial projects undertaken by staff of the OSD-SJW Archives to commemorate the 150th anniversary (1870–2020) of the Sir James Whitney School for the Deaf (SJW) in Belleville, Ontario. Initially known as the Ontario Institution for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb (OIDD), it opened on Thursday, October 20, 1870. This article includes a condensed history of the life of John Barrett McGann, an Irish-born immigrant to Canada in 1855, and his founding of schools for deaf children in Toronto (1858), Hamilton (1864), and Belleville (1870), taken from a forthcoming book by …

A Decade Of Hard Work And Success, 2010–2020, Clifton F. Carbin, Donna J. Fano

Society for American Sign Language Journal

This article1 is an account of the archives and museum at the Sir James Whitney School for the Deaf (SJW) in Belleville, Ontario, which has a long history dating back to 1870. The deaf community affectionately calls this school “Belleville” in American Sign Language after the city where it is located, and so references to the school in this article are also to “the Belleville school.” It is also important to understand that the Belleville school had different names over the years: The school was first called the Ontario Institution for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb …

Why Schools For Deaf Children Are A Good Thing..., Jody Cripps

Society for American Sign Language Journal

No abstract provided.

Volume 5, Issue 1

Society for American Sign Language Journal

No abstract provided.

How Hearing Parents With Deaf Or Hard Of Hearing Children Construct Deafness Through Their Early Intervention Experience, Bettie T. Petersen

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This dissertation explores how hearing parents with deaf/hard of hearing children come to understand deafness. This mixed methods study used an online survey and multiple case studies (volunteers from survey). Participants were asked about early intervention experiences and beliefs about deafness. The survey had 74 respondents and five families participated in the interviews. Survey participants’ beliefs about deafness were primarily medical, focusing on the perceived barriers caused by deafness and the remediation of those barriers through spoken language options. A small number of respondents adopted a cultural perspective of deafness and focused on remediation of barriers through involvement in the …

Collaging As Embodied Method: The Use Of Collage In A Study Of American Sign Language (Asl) Interpreters' Experiences, Lucy E. Bailey, Taylor L. Woodall-Greene

The Qualitative Report

This methodological essay describes the generativity of collaborative collaging in a qualitative inquiry project with American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters who serve D/deaf students within a public university. Sign language interpreting is a demanding profession requiring physical endurance, creativity, and quick mental processing to switch between spoken and sign language. Interpreters’ visual communicative culture aligns conceptually with the embodied arts-based, visual, and tactile research technique of collaging. We first introduce collaging scholarship to ground our discussion of using collaging as a method within this case study of ASL interpreters. We then provide an overview of ASL interpreter research and our …

Lived Experiences Of Mixed-Race Children Of Deaf Adults, Marissa Rivera

Master of Arts in Interpreting Studies and Communication Equity Thesis or Action Research Project

The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative exploratory study was to examine the impact of Deaf culture upbringing on mixed-race children raised in the United States. The data was obtained through virtual semi structured focus groups with ten mixed-race children of Deaf adults (Codas) over the age of eighteen years old, and an anonymous survey with the phenomenological analysis of participants’ experiences growing up as a mixed-race child of a Deaf adult. Growing up mixed-race as a Coda revealed four overarching themes of lived experiences such as: intersectionality of a mixed-race Coda, parental culture transmission, hearing family members, and managing intersecting …