British Sign Language Users Research Articles

Point of view in British Sign Language and spoken English narrative discourse: the example of “The Tortoise and the Hare”

AbstractThis paper discusses how point of view (POV) is expressed in British Sign Language (BSL) and spoken English narrative discourse. Spoken languages can mark changes in POV using strategies such as direct/indirect discourse, whereas signed languages can mark changes in POV in a unique way using “role shift”. Role shift is where the signer “becomes” a referent by taking on attributes of that referent, e.g. facial expression. In this study, two native BSL users and two native British English speakers were asked to tell the story “The Tortoise and the Hare”. The data were then compared to see how point of view is expressed and maintained in both languages. The results indicated that the spoken English users preferred the narrator's perspective, whereas the BSL users preferred a character's perspective. This suggests that spoken and signed language users may structure stories in different ways. However, some co-speech gestures and facial expressions used in the spoken English stories to denote characters' thoughts and feelings bear resemblance to the hand movements and facial expressions used by the BSL storytellers. This suggests that while approaches to storytelling may differ, both languages share some gestural resources which manifest themselves in different ways across different modalities.

The Sign Language of Music: Musical Shaping Gestures (MSGs) in Rehearsal Talk by Performers with Hearing Impairments

The first part of this paper reviews literature on the use of gesture in musical contexts and reports an investigation of the gestures (spontaneous gesticulation) made by musicians with different levels of hearing impairment in rehearsal talk. Profoundly deaf musicians, who were also users of British Sign Language, were found to produce significantly more gestures than moderately deaf and hearing musicians. Analysis also revealed the presence of underlying spatial and cross-modal associations in the gestural representations produced by all the musicians. The second part of the paper discusses the results of the study and addresses some wider theoretical questions. First, a classification of ‘musical shaping gestures’ (MSGs) according to existing taxonomies is attempted. Second, the question of how a standardised ‘sign language of music’ could be formed is addressed and, finally, the potential uses of such a system are considered.

The British Sign Language versions of the Patient Health Questionnaire, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item Scale, and the Work and Social Adjustment Scale.

The present study is aimed to translate 3 widely used clinical assessment measures into British Sign Language (BSL), to pilot the BSL versions, and to establish their validity and reliability. These were the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item (GAD-7) scale, and the Work and Social Adjustment Scale (WSAS). The 3 assessment measures were translated into BSL and piloted with the Deaf signing population in the United Kingdom (n = 113). Participants completed the PHQ-9, GAD-7, WSAS, and Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation–Outcome Measure (CORE-OM) online. The reliability and validity of the BSL versions of PHQ-9, GAD-7, and WSAS have been examined and were found to be good. The construct validity for the PHQ-9 BSL version did not find the single-factor solution as found in the hearing population. The BSL versions of PHQ-9, GAD-7, and WSAS have been produced in BSL and can be used with the signing Deaf population in the United Kingdom. This means that now there are accessible mental health assessments available for Deaf people who are BSL users, which could assist in the early identification of mental health difficulties.

Investigating Deaf Children's Vocabulary Knowledge in British Sign Language

This study explores different aspects of the mapping between phonological form and meaning of signs in British Sign Language (BSL) by means of four tasks to measure meaning recognition, form recognition, form recall, and meaning recall. The aim was to investigate whether there is a hierarchy of difficulty for these tasks and, therefore, whether BSL vocabulary acquisition proceeds incrementally, as is the case for spoken languages. Twenty‐four deaf participants (aged 5–15 years), all of whom were BSL users, performed with greatest accuracy on meaning recognition and least accurately on meaning recall. The results indicate that signers’ knowledge of mapping between form and meaning in BSL signs is not an all‐or‐nothing phenomenon but depends on what the learner is required to do with that knowledge, as is the case for spoken languages.

Writing Profiles of Deaf Children Taught through British Sign Language

Congenitally, profoundly deaf children whose first language is British Sign Language (BSL) and whose speech is largely unintelligible need to be literate to communicate effectively in a hearing society. Both spelling and writing skills of such children can be limited, to the extent that no currently available assessment method offers an adequate appraisal of their competence. Our aim was to create such an instrument to aid assessment and to support teachers in setting objectives for their deaf students' writing development.Writing samples describing the same four-picture story were collected from 29 congenitally, profoundly deaf 10-year-old users of BSL. Six experienced teachers of the deaf ranked their writing productions in five levels; the correlations between their ranks were high and significant. This indicates that the children's texts were classified reliably into categories, which could then be used for further descriptive analysis. The texts in each category were analysed qualitatively to provide descriptive profiles for each level. An indication of the concurrent validity of the profiles was obtained through significant correlations with reading comprehension measures. Future research should ascertain further the reliability and validity of this instrument and its usefulness in setting goals for improving deaf children's writing ability. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Writing profiles of deaf children taught through British sign language

AbstractCongenitally, profoundly deaf children whose first language is British Sign Language (BSL) and whose speech is largely unintelligible need to be literate to communicate effectively in a hearing society. Both spelling and writing skills of such children can be limited, to the extent that no currently available assessment method offers an adequate appraisal of their competence. Our aim was to create such an instrument to aid assessment and to support teachers in setting objectives for their deaf students' writing development.Writing samples describing the same four-picture story were collected from 29 congenitally, profoundly deaf 10-year-old users of BSL. Six experienced teachers of the deaf ranked their writing productions in five levels; the correlations between their ranks were high and significant. This indicates that the children's texts were classified reliably into categories, which could then be used for further descriptive analysis. The texts in each category were analysed qualitatively to...

Perceptually optimised coding of open signed video based on gaze prediction

A gaze location prediction model is presented for open signed broadcast video based on actual eye tracking data with fluent British sign language users. The model is used for formulating a variable quality coding approach of such video which is shown to be capable of offering up to 30% reduction in bit rate with little or no discernible effect on the understanding or viewing experience, as suggested by the results of a subjective evaluation by sign language viewers.

Testing comprehension abilities in users of British Sign Language following CVA

Recent imaging (e.g., MacSweeney et al., 2002) and lesion ( Hickok, Love-Geffen, & Klima, 2002) studies suggest that sign language comprehension depends primarily on left hemisphere structures. However, this may not be true of all aspects of comprehension. For example, there is evidence that the processing of topographic space in sign may be vulnerable to right hemisphere damage (e.g., Hickok, Say, Bellugi, & Klima, 1996), and the influence of iconicity on comprehension has yet to be explored. In this study, comprehension testing was conducted with 15 signers with unilateral brain damage, and with elderly Deaf controls. Four tests were administered: a test of iconic and non-iconic noun comprehension, a test of verb and sentence comprehension, a test of locative sentence comprehension, and a test of classifier comprehension. All tests were administered in British Sign Language (BSL), a language that has only recently been explored with lesioned signers (see Atkinson, Marshall, Thacker, & Woll, 2004; Marshall, Atkinson, Thacker, Woll, & Smulevitch, 2004; Marshall, Atkinson, Woll, & Thacker, in press). People with left hemisphere damage were impaired relative to controls on all tests. Those with right hemisphere damage performed well in the first two tests, but were impaired on locative sentences and classifiers. Neither group showed any effect of iconicity. The results shed further light on the laterality of sign language comprehension.

Understanding ‘not’: neuropsychological dissociations between hand and head markers of negation in BSL

Simple negation in natural languages represents a complex interrelationship of syntax, prosody, semantics and pragmatics, and may be realised in various ways: lexically, morphologically and prosodically. In almost all spoken languages, the first two of these are the primary realisations of syntactic negation. In contrast, in many signed languages negation can occur without lexical or morphological marking. Thus, in British Sign Language (BSL), negation is obligatorily expressed using face–head actions alone (facial negation) with the option of articulating a manual form alongside the required face–head actions (lexical negation). What are the processes underlying facial negation? Here, we explore this question neuropsychologically. If facial negation reflects lexico-syntactic processing in BSL, it may be relatively spared in people with unilateral right hemisphere (RH) lesions, as has been suggested for other ‘grammatical facial actions’ [Language and Speech 42 (1999) 307; Emmorey, K. (2002). Language, cognition and the brain: Insights from sign language research. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum (Lawrence)]. Three BSL users with RH lesions were specifically impaired in perceiving facial compared with manual (lexical and morphological) negation. This dissociation was absent in three users of BSL with left hemisphere lesions and different degrees of language disorder, who also showed relative sparing of negation comprehension. We conclude that, in contrast to some analyses [Applied Psycholinguistics 18 (1997) 411; Emmorey, K. (2002). Language, cognition and the brain: Insights from sign language research. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum (Lawrence); Archives of Neurology 36 (1979) 837], non-manual negation in sign may not be a direct surface realisation of syntax [Language and Speech 42 (1999) 143; Language and Speech 42 (1999) 127]. Difficulties with facial negation in the RH-lesion group were associated with specific impairments in processing facial images, including facial expressions. However, they did not reflect generalised ‘face-blindness’, since the reading of (English) speech patterns from faces was spared in this group. We propose that some aspects of the linguistic analysis of sign language are achieved by prosodic analysis systems (analysis of face and head gestures), which are lateralised to the minor hemisphere.

Investigating comprehension impairments in users of British sign language following CVA

Investigating comprehension impairments in users of British sign language following CVA

It's All a Matter of Timing: Sign Visibility and Sign Reference in Deaf and Hearing Mothers of 18-Month-Old Children.

The signed and spoken language produced by 14 mothers to their 18-month-old children during free play was analyzed. All the children had profound prelingual deafness. Seven of the mothers were profoundly deaf and fluent users of British Sign Language (BSL) or Auslan. The other seven were hearing and had enrolled in a signing program. Maternal signed utterances were classified according to whether they were made in the child's line of sight and whether they had a salient context; that is, they referred to an object or event at the child's current focus of attention. Spoken utterances were coded by word length. Comparisons between the two groups showed that both deaf and hearing mothers produced a majority of single-sign utterances (rather than utterances containing two or more signs). Deaf mothers also produced a majority of single-word spoken utterances, whereas the hearing mothers produced a significantly greater proportion of multiword utterances. As predicted, deaf mothers were more successful than hearing mothers in presenting signed utterances with a salient context that were visible to their children. Across the group as a whole, the total number of visible and salient signed utterances produced in 10 minutes was positively correlated with the total number of occasions on which mothers successfully redirected their child's attention or the child spontaneously turned to look at the mother. This suggests that deaf children who are visually attentive to their mothers receive a greater number of visible signed utterances with a salient context. I argue that this provides a more secure context for early language development.

Deafness — disability or linguistic minority?

Although deaf women are usually seen as disabled, there is a movement among British Sign Language Users (BSL) to be seen instead as a linguistic minority. The deaf community itself is divided on this issue, and it is seen by some commentators on disability issues as inappropriate at a time when the meaning of the term ‘disability’ is itself being redefined positively. Access to services including sign language translation may depend on how these ‘labels’ are interpreted and used. Midwives should be sensitive to the woman's own, potentially ambiguous, view of herself as either having a disability or being a member of particular cultural and linguistic group.

Learning to Look in the Right Place: A Comparison of Attentional Behavior in Deaf Children With Deaf and Hearing Mothers

Eleven 18-month-old children with profound prelingual hearing loss were video-recorded in a free-play session with their mothers. Five of the mothers were profoundly deaf and fluent users of British Sign Language (BSL) or Auslan. The other six were hearing and had enrolled in a signing program. Ten-minute segments from each session were analyzed to determine the number of switches in attention shown by each child. Switches in attention were subdivided into three categories: spontaneous (where the child spontaneously looked to the mother); responsive (where the child responded to some maternal action such as moving an object); and elicited (where the mother made a direct attempt to gain the child's attention. Failed attempts to gain attention were also noted. A comparison of deaf and hearing mothers revealed no difference in the proportion of spontaneous or responsive switches in attention shown by their children. Responsive switches were by far the most frequent category for both groups, but these most commonly focused on objects and did not provide an opportunity for maternal signing. Successful perception of signing typically followed from spontaneous or elicited attentional switches. Deaf mothers were generally more insistent on their children turning to look at them, and they were more successful in eliciting attentional switches although they also had more failed attempts. These overall differences between the two groups were overshadowed by large individual differences within the groups. Within the sample there were both deaf and hearing mothers who achieved successful signed communication with their children.

Hearing-impaired or British Sign Language Users? Social Policies and the Deaf Community

Hearing-impaired or British Sign Language Users? Social Policies and the Deaf Community