This paper examines policies and practices of inclusive education for young deaf children in Ghana. Though existing Government policy promotes the principles and implementation of educational inclusion of all children in Ghana, caregivers often encounter significant challenges ensuring access to early years' education for their deaf children. We…

Early childhood programs promote language play opportunities due to the well-documented positive influences on cognition, language, and literacy development. This qualitative investigation explores language play through the form of signed rhyme and rhythm among young deaf children. Teachers specializing in deaf education within an early childhood…

The ability to associate different types of number representations referring to the same quantity (symbolic Arabic numerals, signed/spoken number words, and nonsymbolic quantities), is an important predictor of overall mathematical success. This foundational skill--mapping--has not been examined in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children. To…

This study is the first to analyze data from a national survey to investigate the significance for deaf identity of the different forms of social and technological support that deaf people rely upon. Data were derived from a survey among 839 deaf people and were analyzed with regard to social identification as deaf, hearing, bicultural, and…

Studies have shown the benefits of fingerspelling on literacy skills in school-age deaf and hard-of-hearing students. This study is an observation of 20 first- and second-grade classrooms. The classroom observations were coded for fingerspelling event frequency, type, length, and whether it was chained to print. The observations showed that…

The current study presents the results of a qualitative investigation into the perspectives of mothers who have adopted children who are deaf or hard of hearing. Nine mothers, recruited via convenience and snowball sampling, participated in semi-structured interviews via videoconference technology. The interviews were transcribed and coded for…

When a deaf or hard-of-hearing child enters a classroom with an interpreter, the goal, and sometimes the assumption, is that they will be granted full access to the classroom experience. This study focuses on the clarity and completeness with which critical elements of classroom discourse are conveyed through the interpretations of 40 educational…

This article describes the lexical and syntactic development of written narratives in 24 deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students aged between 8 and 18 and takes into account how their varying linguistic backgrounds may predict their written performance. All participants use spoken Swedish, but the study also considers their proficiency in Swedish…

This study investigated the associations between self-reported deaf or hard of hearing (D/HH) and informal and formal social participation among Americans aged 65 or older and how their family resources, health, and community social capital may partially account for these associations. Using cross-sectional data from the National Health and Aging…

Early detection of hearing loss leads to early intervention-related decisions. Most children with cochlear implants (CIs) are born to hearing parents. Prior evidence suggests that this increased access to oral communication and the "hearing" world means oral communication is prioritized by hearing parents. Language plays a key role…

This study analyzes the mother-child interaction that takes place after co-viewing an educational video, comparing a group of 12 Spanish hearing mothers of deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) 7- to 9-year-olds and a group of 12 Spanish mothers of an age-matched cohort of children with typical hearing (TH). The results show that, in order to ascertain…

Few studies exist on the early care and education (ECE) of children who are deaf in low-to-middle-income countries, and none examine the roles of deaf adults in such provision. A research base is needed to inform contextually sensitive "deaf-infused" models of ECE in such contexts that build on indigenous deaf community experience,…

Deaf and hearing adults perceive faces differently. This study investigates whether these differences are acquired during childhood development. We characterized facial perception in deaf and hearing children aged 7-17 using a perceptual discrimination task. Configural and featural information was manipulated in the eye and mouth facial regions.…

This study explored the impact of a caregiver training intervention on caregivers' use of individually selected facilitative language techniques (FLTs) with their children (ranging from 14 to 27 months of age) who were deaf or hard of hearing. In addition, the study sought to identify real-time relationships between caregiver input and child…

Over the past decades, changes in technology and policy have made developing and maintaining identity and community increasingly challenging for Deaf individuals. This is particularly obvious in Iceland, where the Deaf community is threatened in its existence. This paper reports on an empirical study that explores how Deaf individuals experience…