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Grammatical properties are found in conventional sign languages of the deaf and in unconventional gesture systems created by deaf children lacking language models. However, they do not arise in spontaneous gestures produced along with speech. The authors propose a model explaining when the manual modality will assume grammatical properties and when it will not. The model argues that two grammatical features, segmentation and hierarchical combination, appear in all settings in which one human communicates symbolically with another. These properties are preferentially assumed by speech whenever words are spoken, constraining the manual modality to a global form. However, when the manual modality must carry the full burden of communication, it is freed from the global form it assumes when integrated with speech--only to be constrained by the task of symbolic communication to take on the grammatical properties of segmentation and hierarchical combination.

The focus of this review article is on families with Deaf parents and hearing children. We provide a brief description of the Deaf community, their language, and culture; describe communication patterns and parenting issues in Deaf-parented families, examine the role of the hearing child in a Deaf family and how that experience affects their functioning in the hearing world; and discuss important considerations and resources for families, educators, and health care and service providers.

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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.

Background: Many autistic adults report interpersonal traumas (IPTs) such as physical or sexual assault, which are often associated with posttraumatic stress and dissociation. Factors such as gender might make autistic individuals particularly vulnerable to experiencing IPT and negative posttraumatic symptoms. Methods: In this study, 687 self-identified autistic adults completed an online survey on their traumatic experiences and mental health symptoms. Results: Seventy-two percent of participants reported experiencing sexual assault, other unwanted or uncomfortable sexual experiences, or physical assault. Forty-four percent of participants met the criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including 50% of those who had experienced IPT and 28% of those who had not (odds ratio = 2.50; 95% confidence interval 1.74-3.60). IPT was also significantly associated with higher levels of psychoform ( p < 0.001) and somatoform ( p < 0.001) dissociation. Autistic cisgender women and gender minorities experienced a significantly higher number of traumas ( p = 0.004) and were significantly more likely than cisgender men to experience sexual IPT ( p < 0.001) and meet the criteria for PTSD ( p < 0.001). There were no significant differences between autistic individuals with and without a professional autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis. Conclusions: IPT is associated with potentially severe mental health outcomes for autistic adults. Autistic women and gender minorities may be particularly vulnerable to sexual IPT and adverse outcomes. Increased screening for a history of IPT and posttraumatic symptoms is recommended for all autistic adults regardless of ASD diagnosis status.

The condition of deafness presents a developmental context that provides insight into the biological, cultural, and linguistic factors underlying the development of neural systems that impact social cognition. Studies of visual attention, behavioral regulation, language development, and face and human action perception are discussed. Visually based culture and language provides deaf children with affordances that promote resiliency and optimization in their development of visual engagement, executive functions, and theory of mind. These experiences promote neural adaptations permitting nuanced perception of classes of linguistic and emotional-social behaviors. Studies of deafness provide examples of how interactions and contributions of biological predispositions and genetic phenotypes with environmental and cultural factors including childhood experiences and actions of caregivers shape developmental trajectories (M. I. Posner & M. K. Rothbart, 2007).

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