This dissertation represents the first systematic study of the sign language of deaf children with autism. The signing of such children is of particular interest because of the unique ways that some of the known impairments of autism are likely to interact with sign language. In particular, the visual-spatial modality of sign requires signers to understand the visual perspectives of others, a skill which may require theory of mind, which is thought to be delayed in autism (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985). It is hypothesized that an impairment in visual perspective-taking could lead to phonological errors in American Sign Language (ASL), specifically in the parameters of palm orientation, movement, and location. Twenty-five deaf children and adolescents with autism (10 deaf-of-deaf and 15 deaf-of-hearing) between the ages of 4;7 and 20;3 as well as a control group of 13 typically-developing deaf-of-deaf children between the ages of 2;7 and 6;9 were observed in a series of studies, including naturalistic observation, lexical elicitation, fingerspelling, imitation of nonsense gestures, two visual perspective-taking tasks, and a novel sign learning task. The imitation task was also performed on a control group of 24 hearing, non-signing college students. Finally, four deaf mothers of deaf autistic children were interviewed about their children’s signing. Results showed that young deaf-of-deaf autistic children under the age of 10 are prone to making phonological errors involving the palm orientation parameter, substituting an inward palm for an outward palm and vice versa. There is very little evidence that such errors occur in the typical acquisition of ASL or any other sign language. These results indicate that deaf children with autism are impaired from an early age in a cognitive mechanism involved in the acquisition of sign language phonology, though it remains unclear which mechanism(s) might be responsible. This research demonstrates the importance of sign language research for a more complete understanding of autism, as well as the need for research into atypical populations for a better understanding of sign language linguistics. / text

Little information exists about challenges that bilingual clinical social workers face when engaging individuals with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) in forensic settings, which may influence the efficacy of services provided. Bilingual clinical social workers in the U.S. state of South Carolina lack operational guidelines to assist people with LEP who are involved in forensic matters. The purpose of this study was to explore challenges that affect delivery of bilingual clinical social work to people with LEP in forensic settings. Ecological systems theory served as the conceptual framework for this study. Purposive and snowball sampling methods led to the participation of 6 licensed bilingual clinical social workers who met the criterion of experience in the provision of services to people with LEP in forensic settings, either in Spanish or American Sign Language (ASL). Data were collected using semistructured interviews through phone calls and videoconferencing platforms. Interviews were transcribed and reviewed by participants to ensure accuracy. Collected data were organized, processed, and analyzed through thematic analysis to identify emerging themes. Key themes included: financial constraints; low-priority for LEP clients; lack of community support; issues with service access; cross-agency collaborations; and laws, policies, and initiatives. The findings of this study may lead to positive social change by substantiating the importance of additional support for bilingual social workers in the form of education, supervision, and continued training. With support and collaboration, bilingual social workers may be able to enact social change to overcome challenges in the provision of services for LEP individuals.

Communication between deaf individuals and hearing individuals can be very difficult. For people who are born deaf, English is often a second language with the first language being American Sign Language (ASL). Very few hearing people in the United States sign or are aware of Deafness, Deaf culture, or how to appropriately communicate with people with hearing loss. In this thesis, I concentrate on the role that mobile technologies can play in ameliorating some of these issues. In formative work with Deaf teenagers in the metro-Atlanta area, I investigate the role that communication technologies play in the lives of many Deaf individuals and examine how these devices have effected their communication patterns and social circles. Specifically, the teens identified problems communicating with hearing individuals such as close friends and family in face-to-face situations. Having identified sign language use at home as one of the earliest interventions for Deaf children, I investigated the use of mobile phones for learning survival-level ASL. I created a prototype software application which presented short ASL lessons via either a mobile phone or desktop web-browser. The software presented the lessons via one of two different scheduling methods designed to take advantage of the spacing effect during learning. I designed and conducted a study of forty individuals with no prior ASL knowledge which compared the effects of both scheduling algorithm and platform. My results show that individuals who used a mobile phone platform and received a group of lessons at one time performed better on post-test receptive and generative ASL metrics than did participants in the three other conditions.

The move from Standard Definition (SD) to High Definition (HD) represents a six times increases in data, which needs to be processed. With expanding resolutions and evolving compression, there is a need for high performance with flexible architectures to allow for quick upgrade ability. The technology advances in image display resolutions, advanced compression techniques, and video intelligence. Software implementation of these systems can attain accuracy with tradeoffs among processing performance (to achieve specified frame rates, working on large image data sets), power and cost constraints. There is a need for new architectures to be in pace with the fast innovations in video and imaging. It contains dedicated hardware implementation of the pixel and frame rate processes on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to achieve the real-time performance. The following outlines the contributions of the dissertation. (1) We develop a target detection system by applying a novel running average mean threshold (RAMT) approach to globalize the threshold required for background subtraction. This approach adapts the threshold automatically to different environments (indoor and outdoor) and different targets (humans and vehicles). For low power consumption and better performance, we design the complete system on FPGA. (2) We introduce a safe distance factor and develop an algorithm for occlusion occurrence detection during target tracking. A novel mean-threshold is calculated by motion-position analysis. (3) A new strategy for gesture recognition is developed using Combinational Neural Networks (CNN) based on a tree structure. Analysis of the method is done on American Sign Language (ASL) gestures. We introduce novel point of interests approach to reduce the feature vector size and gradient threshold approach for accurate classification. (4) We design a gesture recognition system using a hardware/ software co-simulation neural network for high speed and low memory storage requirements provided by the FPGA. We develop an innovative maximum distant algorithm which uses only 0.39% of the image as the feature vector to train and test the system design. Database set gestures involved in different applications may vary. Therefore, it is highly essential to keep the feature vector as low as possible while maintaining the same accuracy and performance

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This study focuses on the life experiences of a rural, Deaf Appalachian woman, Jane Ann Shelton, a second generation Deaf child born to Deaf parents from the communities of Devil’s Fork (Flag Pond, Tennessee) and Shelton Laurel (Madison County, North Carolina). Over two hours of videotaped interviews were interpreted and transcribed, followed by various other communications to describe the life of a rural, Deaf Appalachian woman without a formal high school degree. As an advocate and a political lobbyist in Tennessee during the 1980s and 90s, she was unparalleled by her peers (deaf or hearing) in her efforts to “enhance the lives of ALL Deaf Tennesseans.” From these interactions and my firsthand knowledge, I crafted stories of her life experiences for the purpose of performing them for both Deaf and hearing audiences. Further studies should be done on rural Deaf Appalachia as precious little oral history has been collected.

Deaf individuals typically have access to 2 types of therapeutic services: interpretive (with an interpreter) and noninterpretive (with a sign-fluent therapist). Previous research indicates that the presence of an interpreter may hinder development of working alliance and attachment. There is a lack of empirical evidence assessing the effect of working alliance and attachment based on whether or not therapy incorporates an interpreter. The working alliance theory and the attachment theory were the theoretical foundations for this study. This study examined the difference between the strength of working alliance and attachment to the therapist given the presence or absence of an interpreter in therapy for Deaf individuals (N = 39) utilizing the Working Alliance Inventory and the Client Attachment to Therapist Scale. A multivariate analysis of variance was utilized to examine the differences between interpretive and noninterpretive services. The results indicated that individuals who received noninterpretive services had stronger working alliance and attachment with their therapist, which suggests that the type of therapy services Deaf individuals receive should strongly be considered. Accordingly, an increase of sign-fluent therapists would promote social change by providing more appropriate services that would remove barriers that hinder working alliance and attachment to the therapist.

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