Congenitally deaf individuals exhibit enhanced visuospatial abilities relative to normally hearing individuals. An early example is the increased sensitivity of deaf signers to stimuli in the visual periphery (Neville and Lawson, 1987a). While these enhancements are robust and extend across a number of visual and spatial skills, they seem not to extend to other domains which could potentially build on these enhancements. For example, congenitally deaf children, in the absence of adequate language exposure and acquisition, do not develop typical social cognition skills as measured by traditional Theory of Mind tasks. These delays/deficits occur despite their presumed lifetime use of visuo-perceptual abilities to infer the intentions and behaviors of others (e.g., Pyers and Senghas, 2009; O’Reilly et al., 2014). In a series of studies, we explore the limits on the plasticity of visually based socio-cognitive abilities, from perspective taking to Theory of Mind/False Belief, in rarely studied individuals: deaf adults who have not acquired a conventional language (Homesigners). We compared Homesigners’ performance to that of two other understudied groups in the same culture: Deaf signers of an emerging language (Cohort 1 of Nicaraguan Sign Language), and hearing speakers of Spanish with minimal schooling. We found that homesigners performed equivalently to both comparison groups with respect to several visual socio-cognitive abilities: Perspective Taking (Levels 1 and 2), adapted from Masangkay et al. (1974), and the False Photograph task, adapted from Leslie and Thaiss (1992). However, a lifetime of visuo-perceptual experiences (observing the behavior and interactions of others) did not support success on False Belief tasks, even when linguistic demands were minimized. Participants in the comparison groups outperformed the Homesigners, but did not universally pass the False Belief tasks. Our results suggest that while some of the social development achievements of young typically developing children may be dissociable from their linguistic experiences, language and/or educational experiences clearly scaffolds the transition into False Belief understanding. The lack of experience using a shared language cannot be overcome, even with the benefit of many years of observing others’ behaviors and the potential neural reorganization and visuospatial enhancements resulting from deafness.

This article presents a selective overview of topics related to the language experience of early bimodal bilinguals - individuals who are raised from an early age using two languages from two different modalities, typically spoken (or written) and signed. We show that deaf and hearing bimodal bilinguals may display patterns of bilingualism that are similar to unimodal bilinguals in some ways, such as the use of both languages in a single situation or even a single utterance. Nevertheless, there are also differences between bimodal and unimodal bilinguals, and differences among different subgroups of bimodal bilinguals, given large variation in relative access to the dominant and minority language(s) in their environment and their differential experiences in schooling and interactions with potential interlocutors. Moreover, we review studies discussing potential advantages of the sign modality and advantages of bilingualism in this population. We hope to highlight the importance of considering children’s overall language experience, including the age(s) at which they are exposed to each of their languages, the richness of their experiences with each of the languages, and the ways that the language-learning experience may contribute to the child’s linguistic and cognitive development.

Narrative cohesion is the use of linguistic devices to signal relationships among clauses in a narrative (Stromqvist & Verhoeven 2004;Halliday & Hasan 1976). While such relationships include a variety of relationships (e.g., temporal or causal) between clauses, we focus here on establishing reference. Referring expressions must be more informative (e.g., noun phrases) when a referent has not yet been introduced in the discourse, or when another referent is active, or more accessible. Conversely, referring expressions can be less informative (e.g., pronouns) when a referent is highly accessible, particularly when it is the active referent (Chafe 1975;Ariel 1991). This pattern is robust cross-linguistically and across modalities. Studies of the effect of modality on language structure generally find few structural differences between sign and spoken languages. Those that do exist relate to the visuo-manual modality's use of space to express linguistic structure; such as spatial verb agreement and simultaneous expression of components of motion events in classifier constructions (see Meier 2002 and references).How are patterns of narrative cohesion acquired by children? English-speaking adults use lexical nouns (as opposed to pronouns) the first time a character is mentioned, and pronouns (as opposed to lexical nouns) to maintain reference to that character. Children are not sensitive to discourse context and the accessibility of referents, and do not use these devices in an adult-like way for narrative cohesion until around 9 years of age (Karmiloff-Smith 1985). Children acquiring established sign languages produce a range of forms similar to that of signing adults, including nonmanual forms and enactments of a character's actions (constructed action). Like children acquiring spoken language, they do not reliably show the adult pattern of using full noun phrases the first time a character is mentioned (Morgan 2006). Overall, the acquisition literature suggests that narrative cohesion is not an automatic consequence of language structure at the lexical and syntactic levels. Here we ask whether narrative cohesion in an emerging language resembles that of established languages, and whether it arises immediately once lexical and syntactic structures are in place.To investigate this, we look to Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), a rapidly emerging language approximately thirty years old. NSL possesses a range of syntactic devices to refer to characters. In particular, the use of pronominal points and a switch-reference device developed over the first two decades of its emergence (Coppola & Senghas 2010). To investigate the development of discourse structure, particularly the role of an emerging linguistic community on narrative development, we asked whether signers in Nicaragua used these devices for narrative cohesion, and, in using them, unambiguously identified the characters within their narratives.We can envision at least two scenarios regarding how discourse conventions might emerge in a new language: 1) Discourse p...

Literacy in Deaf communities has been redefined to include knowledge and skill in the production and comprehension of sign language as well as in the written form of the larger community’s spoken language. However, this reconceptualization has occurred primarily in communities with well-established sign languages. This chapter considers this type of literacy in emerging sign language contexts where the social, political, and financial resources are oftentimes scarce. The chapter presents the community of Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) signers, a newly emerged sign language that is now just over 40 years old, as a case study and explores the educational, cultural, and social evolution of NSL. Considering this context, findings are presented that speak to the relationship between language, cognitive development, and academic success particular to sign literacy. These findings are presented in the context of other emerging languages in both urban and rural/village settings.

This paper investigates a form-meaning mapping in American Sign Language (ASL) whereby pronouns, verbs, and quantifiers can be produced progressively higher in signing space to signal a widening of their contextually supplied domains. We show that this is not a gesture-like expression of surprise, uncertainty, or quantity, and is also not equivalent to well-studied domain-widened quantifiers in spoken language, but rather involves reference via plural pronouns in ASL. When appearing with verbs these pronouns are incorporated as arguments and when appearing with quantifiers as a partitive-like domain restriction. In addition, we show that the use of continuous space along the height dimension in ASL allows for gradient interpretations of domain widening and narrowing. We contrast the grammatical functions of this use of height in sign languages with superficially similar gesture and prosody accompanying spoken language.