Every so often there are stories that take the world by storm and make such an impact that they become part of our everyday world. These stories, characters, and themes become established elements of cultural literacy. This is exactly what has happened with J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Harry and his cohort of wizards, witches, and their…

This article examined a database of Australian daily newspapers on the terms cochlear implant and deaf children to investigate how journalists and columnists report competing models of deafness: as either "medical" (deafness is a condition to be cured) or "sociocultural" (deafness provides a way of life to be lived). The…

Video communication systems for deaf people are limited in terms of quality and performance. Analysis of visual attention mechanisms for sign language may enable optimization of video coding systems for deaf users. Eye-movement tracking experiments were conducted with profoundly deaf volunteers while watching sign language video clips. Deaf people…

Assessment of the prelinguistic behaviors of 43 deaf children (ages 8 to 49 months) of hearing parents in Israel found only partial resemblance to the theoretical model of prelinguistic communication in hearing infants. Unique interrelationships among pointing and early noncommunicative behaviors were found with no correlation between use of…

This article reviews methods for assessing vocabulary of young children with hearing impairments including naturalistic observation, parent report measures, and standardized vocabulary tests. It also describes procedures to assess word-learning processes. Cautions on the use of assessment tools with this population are reviewed and suggestions are…

The validity of the Diary of Early Language (Di-EL), a parent report technique, was evaluated with nine children with profound hearing loss using cochlear implants or hearing aids. Lexical data, reported by parents using the Di-EL, agreed with results of the Mac Arthur Communicative Development Inventories and the Rossetti Infant Toddler Language…

This study compared early pragmatic skill development in 76 children (ages 1-4) with severe or profound hearing loss enrolled in either a simultaneous communication (SC) or oral communication (OC) approach to language learning. Results indicated some advantages of the SC approach, although overall frequency of communication and breadth of…

Two studies investigated the developmental trends and concurrent validity of the Language Proficiency Profile-2 (LPP-2), a measure of language and communication skills for deaf children. Results indicate that the LPP-2 has good utility not only as a measure of overall language development but also as a predictor of achievement for English language…

This article describes development of the Profile of Multiple Language Proficiencies (PMLP), a measure of both English and American Sign Language skills in deaf children. The PMLP showed reasonable initial reliability and appears to be an easy-to-use measure. Discussion addresses issues that influence the reliability and validity in evaluating…

Performance of 31 deaf students (ages 7-17) on 15 language and literacy measures found that students scoring highest on a passage-comprehension measure also demonstrated greater proficiency on specific skills (such as reading more listed words). In addition, students who used Signing Exact English (SEE) for 5 years or more scored better than those…

In light of the large and growing numbers of "low functioning deaf" adults who read at very low levels, this article reviews research related to transition for adolescents with disabilities, especially those who are deaf or hard of hearing. It argues for a greater emphasis on vocational and independent living skills in transition programs.…

This response to a previous article on aerial spelling (AS) in New Zealand Sign Language applauds the original author's effort to highlight an interesting feature of deaf communication but finds some claims questionable. These include the lack of research on AS, failure to include AS in the Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language, and imposition…

A study involving 49 students with deafness (MA=13) whose reading age (RA) was around age 7 found that although phonological awareness and decoding performance was poor compared with RA-matched controls, it nevertheless correlated with their RA. Rapid automatized naming of visual material was much faster in subjects than controls. (Contains…

In this study, 16 skilled adult readers who are deaf and 14 less skilled readers completed a battery of experimental tasks that generated multiple indicators of storage capacity and automaticity. Results indicate less skilled readers must invest significantly more conscious mental effort than skilled readers to complete basic operations of…

A study compared the rhyme-generation ability of 20 college students with severe to profound deafness from cued speech (CS) and non-cued speech (NCS) backgrounds with 10 controls for consistent orthography-to-phonology (O-P) rhyming elements and inconsistent O-P. Participants from CS backgrounds did not differ significantly from the hearing…