Elana Pontecorvo

This work interrogates a longstanding myth that for deaf children, learning ASL could impede learning spoken English. Instead, we see that children who learn ASL can also learn spoken English. In fact, children who knew more ASL signs also knew more, not fewer, English words. Just like bilingual children learning two spoken languages, their vocabularies were partially overlapping between the words they knew in ASL, spoken English, or both. There is no downside to providing deaf children with sign language!

Caregivers who learn ASL for their deaf or hard of hearing child learn a new language in a new modality - signed rather than spoken. We surveyed parents about their motivations and experiences, including the resources they used and challenges they faced. We also analyzed their sign language skills and saw that many parents could achieve intermediate sign language skills which would allow them to communicate with their deaf child. We encourage families with deaf children to start their ASL learning journey!

Words like glimmer, glisten, and glow all use "gl" and refer to light. In ASL, signs like "stand," "fall," and "dance" all use the same handshape which represents a pair of legs. This form-meaning relationship is called systematicity, which is sometimes driven by iconicity - some aspect of the sign looks like what it means. We used a computational approach to calculate how pervasive systematicity is in ASL and saw that most (76%) signs have a form-meaning relationship to another sign! We are curious how this pattern impacts the way children and adults learn and use signs.

When toddlers don't use expressive language or say very few words, they're known as "late talkers." While many late talkers catch up, some have persistent challenges with language.  Deaf children who learn sign language from birth are assumed to have typical language development, but naturally, children learn at different rates. There is considerably less research, diagnostic criteria, and interventions for children who may struggle to learn sign language despite early exposure. The goal of this project is to describe what language delays look like in deaf children who grow up in signing environments.