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Abstract
Among the existing sign language assessment tools, only a small number can be used in clinical settings. This contribution aims at presenting three comprehension assessment tests (two lexical and one syntactic) that offer a solid basis to build tools to assess language impairments in deaf signing adults. We provide the material and guidelines, based on psychometric analyses of the items, to make these tests suitable for clinical assessment. They are available for French Sign Language and Italian Sign Language. So far, the three tests were administered to three groups of deaf participants based on age of exposure (AoE) to sign language: native (AoE from birth), early (AoE = from 1 to 5 years), and late (AoE = from 6 to 15 years) signers. The results showed that the three tests are easy for the typical deaf signing population, and therefore, they can be adapted into tests that assess a deaf signing population with language impairments. Moreover, the results of the syntactic test reveal a categorial difference between native and non-native signers and therefore show the need for baselines that mirror the effect of AoE to sign language when assessing language competence, in particular in clinical assessment.
Highlights
The vast majority of existing sign language assessment tools are meant to study language acquisition in deaf signing children, for educational purposes or for linguistic research, and very few can be used to assess deaf signing adults (Haug, 2005)
The results showed that the three tests are easy for the typical deaf signing population, and they can be adapted into tests that assess a deaf signing population with language impairments
The results of the syntactic test reveal a categorial difference between native and non-native signers and show the need for baselines that mirror the effect of age of exposure (AoE) to sign language when assessing language competence, in particular in clinical assessment
Summary
The vast majority of existing sign language assessment tools are meant to study language acquisition in deaf signing children, for educational purposes or for linguistic research, and very few can be used to assess deaf signing adults (Haug, 2005). There is a general lack of tools that incorporate clinical neuropsychological practices detecting deficits that might interfere with typical language processing (i.e., deficits in attention, learning, or emotional difficulties), which could presumably result in poor language development (Hauser et al, 2015; Quinto-Pozos et al, 2014). The three tools that will be presented were built in the framework of the H2020 SIGN-HUB project to test native and non-native deaf signers. These language-specific instruments have been built for different sign languages, but in this work, we will focus on French Sign Language (LSF) and Italian Sign Language (LIS)
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