This study concerns adult Codas, or hearing children of deaf1, signing parents. They are of significant interest to language researchers as bimodal bilinguals who grew up in a multifaceted bicultural environment. The study is based on interviews with 12 Coda adults in Sweden (aged 18–50 years). The interviews were translated, transcribed, and coded for thematic analysis. The analysis draws on the theoretical concepts of social identity and investment proposed by Norton (Norton Peirce, B. (1995). Social identity, investment, and language learning. TESOL Quarterly, 1(29), 9–31 https://faculty.educ.ubc.ca/norton/Norton%201995%20p.pdf.). The main findings indicate that for these Codas, the everyday experience of bimodal bilingualism acts as a driving force in the formation of social identities, fostering linguistic, cultural, and social awareness, which, in turn, influences how individuals invest in their languages and cultures.

Despite the recognition that deaf children and young people’s (CYP) experiences should be central to practice and policy that promotes inclusion, relatively few studies have explored deaf CYP’s perspectives concerning their everyday hearing experiences. This systematic review identified and synthesized qualitative research exploring deaf CYP’s experiences of hearing in everyday contexts. Searches identified 31 papers that met the inclusion criteria. Using thematic synthesis to analyze findings, four themes were identified. The experience of hearing was individualised and influenced by the sounds that CYP could hear, the environment, and supportive strategies. Challenging listening conditions and strategies to manage the experience of hearing were identified, which may be considered by parents, practitioners and policymakers. However, due to the multiple factors that influence hearing, deaf CYP should be consulted on what they find challenging and the strategies they find helpful. Further research exploring deaf CYP’s experiences of hearing outside of school is needed.

The main group of interest in this study are deaf parents of hearing children and the aim is to describe the phenomenon of the inverted sandwich generation effect with deaf parents of hearing children. The basic research framework for this study was Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as defined by Smith et al. (Smith, J. A., Larkin, M., & Flowers, P. (2009). Interpretative phenomenological analysis: Theory, method and research. Sage.). Five themes were defined—grandparent help, child help with interpretation and life support, help from neighbors and others, parental dependency, child independence, and interpretation of childhood and parenthood. These themes were interpreted by analyzing data from two groups of respondents—deaf parents and their hearing children (children of deaf adults). The main finding relates to the reverse sandwich model operating within these generations.

The language practices and experiences of racially and ethnically minoritized users of signed languages have been largely ignored or marginalized within signed language linguistics. We bring a critical disability raciolinguistic perspective to crip linguistics to interrogate the White colonial logics, including essentialized competence, boundedness, and homogeneity, that underlie the foundation of signed language linguistics. We then consider some assumptions which would need to be rejected and embraced to work toward a crip linguistic theory. We conclude that a critical disability raciolinguistic-compatible coalitional linguistic theory that enacts a crip ethos toward language is one that we can and must try to manifest.

This qualitative study aimed to explore parents’ perceptions regarding the communication of their school-aged child with cochlear implants (CIs) in various social contexts. To this end, the construct of “communicative participation” (World Health Organization (2001), International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health, https://www.who.int/standards/classifications/international-classification-of-functioning-disability-and-health) was broadly applied to the population of children with CIs. Nineteen parents participated in semi-structured interviews and described their perceptions and experiences regarding the communication of their child in social contexts. Data were analyzed using a thematic analysis approach. The results showed that overall, despite describing very positive outcomes with CIs, parents reported that their children do experience participation restrictions and activity limitations because of communication difficulties and/or environmental and social barriers. The findings from this study unveiled the communication difficulties of school-aged children with CIs, as experienced by their parents. These difficulties—which may seem subtle—can significantly impact the participation in communication. Language interventions could be improved to better support pupils who are experienced CI users.

Although previous studies have suggested that language deprivation may affect the development of executive functions (EFs), there are no assessment tools adapted to the language needs of deaf-and-hard-of-hearing (DHH) children. The present study had two objectives: (1) to examine the feasibility of the Executive Brain Battery in assessing 40 prelingually deaf-and-hard-of-hearing children between 6 and 12 years, and (2) to explore whether some sociodemographic and clinical variables could be associated with the performance of deaf children. The results showed that all tasks included in the Executive Brain Battery were practicable for more than 75% of participants, with the decision-making task being the only one that demonstrated an improvement in the performance of children between 6–8 and 9–12 years of age. Moreover, the 6–8 years group displayed a sex effect in inhibition and decision-making tasks. However, this effect disappears in the 9–12 years group, which showed only a negative effect of cochlear implants on the theory of mind task.

This paper reports upon an evaluation of a school-based screening program aimed at detecting psychological problems1 in 495 deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students. The first aim of the study was to evaluate the actual implementation of this program. Furthermore, the prevalence of internalizing and externalizing problems in a subset of 277 DHH students was analysed and subsequently how these problems vary as a function of age, gender, context, and negative life circumstances (NLCs). The results show higher prevalence rates of psychological problems compared to typical hearing peers, but lower than in previous studies. More problems were observed in the context of school than at home. No age or gender differences were found, but significantly more internalizing problems in DHH adolescents than externalizing problems. Prevalence of psychological problems among DHH students without NLCs were significantly lower than among students with one or more NLCs. The results shows a screening program to identify psychological problems in special schools can be successfully implemented. Such programs will help to identify psychological problems at an early stage and provide care for DHH children and adolescents with psychological problems.

Previous studies have found that deaf signers exhibited lower accuracy when recognizing emotional expressions from top-half faces compared to hearing non-signers. This suggests that the lack of emotional information from the oral region has a greater impact on deaf signers due to differences in their gaze patterns. The current study aimed to replicate and extend these findings by measuring recognition accuracy under varied facial conditions and analyzing late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes. Based on previous research, it was hypothesized that deaf signers would show reduced recognition accuracy and lower LPP amplitude compared to hearing non-signers in a top-half face condition. To test these hypotheses, 22 deaf signers and 37 hearing non-signers made emotion judgments of faces presented as intact wholes or isolated top or bottom halves, while event-related potentials were recorded. The results supported the main hypotheses, showing that the deaf signers exhibited lower recognition accuracy and reduced LPP amplitudes in the top-half face condition compared to hearing non-signers. These findings were discussed in terms of the challenges deaf signers faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in contexts where facial masks obscured the mouth.

This study investigated service providers’ perspectives on the barriers experienced by families from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds along the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) pathway in Victoria, Australia. Twelve service providers (i.e., hearing screening program staff and diagnostic audiologists) participated in semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed using inductive content analysis. Service providers identified differences in service delivery, communication, and support needs between families from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and those from majority cultural and linguistic (predominantly English-speaking) backgrounds. Perceived barriers included communication difficulties, lack of access to interpreters and translated written resources, cultural factors, and practical barriers to attending appointments. Clarifying the roles of service providers, providing access to resources to support communication, and requiring service providers to participate in cultural responsiveness training are suggested as strategies to improve services for families from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Findings from this study inform service provision throughout the EHDI pathway to improve care for families from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Bryan and Emery introduced a new concept in legal jurisprudence through which a critical examination of how the law deals with deaf people can be undertaken: deaf legal theory (DLT). They define it as “how the law seeks to frame Deaf people” and argue that legal systems should be reoriented to recognise and accommodate the unique perspectives and experiences of deaf people. Current legal systems are biased in favour of hearing people and these bias disadvantage deaf people in a variety of ways, including in their access to justice, employment, and education. The aim of this article is to advance Bryan and Emery’s DLT by expounding its main arguments, situating it within its jurisprudential home of critical legal studies, considering the justification for its existence and providing a framework to apply it. The concept was introduced not within legal discourse but within Deaf Studies discourse and is therefore not yet widely known in legal scholarship. This article aims to bridge the gap between the two disciplines and firmly establish DLT as a legal theory in jurisprudence following which it can be applied to various legal subjects of intellectual enquiry.