Learners' ability to recognize linguistic contrasts in American Sign Language (ASL) was investigated using a paired-comparison discrimination task. Minimal pairs containing contrasts in five linguistic categories (i.e., the formational parameters of movement, handshape, orientation, and location in ASL phonology, and a category comprised of contrasts in complex morphology) were presented in sentence contexts to a sample of 127 hearing learners at beginning and intermediate levels of proficiency and 10 Deaf native signers. Participants' responses were analyzed to determine the relative difficulty of the linguistic categories and the effect of proficiency level on performance. The results indicated that movement contrasts were the most difficult and location contrasts the easiest, with the other categories of stimuli of intermediate difficulty. These findings have implications for language learning in situations in which the first language is a spoken language and the second language (L2) is a signed language. In such situations, the construct of language transfer does not apply to the acquisition of L2 phonology because of fundamental differences between the phonological systems of signed and spoken languages, which are associated with differences between the modalities of speech and sign.The authors are grateful to Tom Weymann and Sarah Schley for their assistance in conducting the data analysis, Gaurav Mathur and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and helpful suggestions, and Joe Hamilton, Jenamarie Bacot, and Jon Lejeune for helping to develop and record the stimuli.
To test whether deaf persons can read signs in peripheral vision, 12 profoundly deaf students, aged 15 to 18, in a residential school for the deaf, were seated between two signers, who presented common signs in random turns. Subjects responded by signing back to a video-camera, on which they were to fix their gaze. The tape recorded their responses as well as their eye movements, if any. Twenty-four signs were presented in each of two conditions: with the stimulus signs between 45° and 61° in the periphery, and with the signs between 61° and 77°. Mean performances, respectively, were 79.7% and 68%. The results support the supposition that peripheral vision may be linguistically and communicatively useful for deaf people, particularly as signs in isolation may be more difficult to read than signs in discourse.
This study describes the postsecondary educational experiences and perceptions of deaf women college students. Deaf women were interviewed using semistructured questions adapted from Gilligan, Lyons, and Hanmer (1990). Findings indicated that these deaf women perceived their college environment as generally positive, though they also perceived instances of unequal treatment.
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