U.S. schools are currently addressing bullying and its effects on children. Bullying is characterized as repetitive verbal teasing, threatening, physical intimidation, demeaning others, violent acts, torture, and other forms of verbal and physical aggression (Smith & Sharp, 1994a). Little is known about bullying and its impact on deaf children. Measures to describe and quantify bullying factors in this population should be developed and validated that address characteristics of deaf victims and bullies, various types of school settings deaf children attend, bullying dynamics that may be unique to this population and its peers, and other environmental factors. The presence of disabilities besides deafness, social support systems of deaf children and their families, sociocultural background, degree of hearing loss, parental educational levels and occupations, socioeconomic status, and linguistic backgrounds should also be considered. This discussion highlights issues and precautions concerning future directions for studying bullying with deaf children.

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Development of valid receptive sign vocabulary tests and the influence of sign iconicity on test performance were investigated. Forty items were taken from the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (Lloyd M. Dunn & Leota M. Dunn, 1982). For each target item, three alternative distractor items were developed to draw nonsigning participants away from a perceptual matching strategy. The sample comprised 34 deaf signing undergraduates and 36 hearing nonsigning undergraduates. Deaf students outperformed hearing students on both sets of items. Hearing students' scores on the original items were significantly higher than on the manipulated items, but both exceeded chance level (25%), indicating that many of the items were iconic for this sample. Complete elimination of iconicity is difficult for sophisticated participants. Recommendations for development of tests for signing deaf students include involvement of nonsigning hearing participants to reduce the effects of iconicity in obtaining valid results.

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Epistemology is examined from two different perspectives within the framework of a broader evolutionary epistemology. Within this framework, reality is not absolute, and truth is a relative concept. People construct individual or personal epistemologies through their experiences, and develop or receive group or socially constructed epistemologies through their interactions with others with shared or similar experiences. There is a common perception that Deaf culture and Deaf epistemologies have been transmitted primarily by Deaf children and Deaf adults who have Deaf parents and who have grown up in a linguistically rich signing environment. The author posits that the far more numerous deaf children of hearing parents may be an even greater force in transmitting some of the strongest views of Deaf epistemology.