NTID Research Center on Culture and Language
About the Center
Mission
The mission of the NTID Research Center on Culture and Language (CCL) is to promote access and education through research, development, and mentorship related to cultural and linguistic characteristics and processes of deaf and hard-of-hearing communities.
Vision
To create an accessible world where deaf and hard-of-hearing people live, learn and thrive with equal footing in different communities and environments.
Selected Publications
Predictors of health literacy among deaf American Sign Language users
Inadequate health literacy among deaf adults was 3.7 times more prevalent than among hearing adults. Disproportionally more people of color, both deaf and hearing, have inadequate health literacy. Deaf adults who are proficient in ASL have better health literacy skills than those with less proficiency. The results highlight the importance of making health care more accessible, more healthcare professionals who are fluent in ASL, and more sign language interpreters with healthcare training.
Internalized oppression and deaf people’s mental health
Deaf people experience ableism, audism, and linguicism in their everyday lives. This study was the first empirical study demonstrating that ableism, audism, and linguicism are separate constructs and each impact deaf people’s mental health differently. Specifically, those who internalized ableism were found to have more depression symptoms, those who internalized both ableism and linguicism had greater anxiety to stressful situations and uncertainty, and those who internalized audism had more persistent anxiety, fear, and worry.
Deaf adults are more likely to encounter challenges in accessing and understanding online information compared to hearing adults. Deaf participants with low health literacy were more likely to rely on visual graphics to support their understanding of the information than those with high health literacy. Deaf participants advocated for health information to be given to the deaf community in ways that are accessible and culturally-appropriate.
The landscape of American Sign Language education
The ASL instruction for second language (L2) or additional language (Ln) has become increasingly popular over the past generation. This study investigated ASL education as a discipline in regard to its strengths, and challenges. The challenges in developing and sustaining ASL education as a discipline are discussed, and recommendations on how ASL education as a discipline can be elevated and sustained are provided.
Development of the American Sign Language Fingerspelling and Numbers Comprehension Test (ASL FaN-CT)
Fingerspelling offers unique challenges to the development and mastery of ASL in that the perceptual mechanisms necessary for decoding fingerspelled words differ from other lexical and grammatical constructions, and neologisms and proper nouns that the interlocutor would be expected to encounter for the first time are frequent. The ASL FaN-CT was developed to measure adult second language (L2) or additional language (Ln) learners comprehension of ASL fingerspelling and numbers. The article discusses the test development and demonstrates that the test has excellent psychometric properties.
Second language learning of depiction in a different modality: The case of sign language acquisition
Depicting signs illustrate actions and states in a broad sense, providing insight into how their acquisition differs among students learning a signed language as both a second modality and a second language (M2L2). This study elicited depicting signs from M2L2 learners in a narrative context, yielding findings with strong implications for sign language pedagogy and instruction.
The sentence repetition task as a measure of sign language proficiency
Sign language research is essential for understanding its impact on people’s lives and related policies. This article discusses the development of the Swedish Sign Language Sentence Repetition Test (STS-SRT), shares the test’s psychometric properties, and provides evidence to support its use as a measure of STS proficiency in research. The STS-SRT can be used as a continuous variable in theoretical, clinical, and applied psycholinguistics and other language and behavioral sciences, as well as by educators and other specialists tracking language development.
The deaf community's experiences navigating COVID-19 pandemic information
Compared to hearing participants, a larger proportion of deaf participants reported challenges in accessing, understanding, and trusting COVID-19 information. Although deaf respondents demonstrated similar knowledge of symptoms as their hearing counterparts, they reported using more prevention strategies and were more likely to plan immediate care for suspected symptoms. Improved guidance on COVID-19 management and healthcare navigation that is accessible to the deaf community is needed.
Welcoming deaf students into STEM: Recommendations for university science education
The article reviews evidence from the literature and, where data are lacking, contribute the expert opinions of the authors, most of whom are deaf scientists themselves, to identify strategies to best support deaf students in university STEM education. The authors describe the journey of a hypothetical deaf student and methods for faculty to create a welcoming environment. The authors also describe and provide recommendations for classroom seating and layout, accommodations, teaching strategies, and research mentoring. They discuss the importance of including deaf scientists in research about deaf individuals.
