Following the rules: consistency in sign

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Deaf Education
• Communication Sciences

Background:

• Hearing-impaired students often receive English instruction through simultaneously signed and spoken systems.
• Several English-based sign systems exist, including Seeing Essential English, Signing Exact English (SEE-II), and Signed/Manual English.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the consistency of teachers and interpreters in adhering to the rules of three English sign systems.
• To determine if professionals accurately implement the specific linguistic structures of signed English systems.

Main Methods:

• Professionals interpreted a standardized set of stimuli designed to test rule adherence.
• Performance was videotaped for bimodal transcription and detailed analysis of signed output.
• Descriptive analysis focused on the form and content of the signed interpretations.

Main Results:

• Many professionals could convey the meaning of spoken English in sign, but often deviated from the specific rules of the purported system.
• Signing Exact English (SEE-II) users demonstrated significantly higher rule adherence compared to other systems (p < .03, p < .001).
• Even SEE-II users followed system rules accurately less than 57% of the time on average.

Conclusions:

• Inconsistent application of sign systems by educators and interpreters may confuse English language acquisition for deaf children.
• While many can sign the meaning, precise adherence to the grammatical rules of systems like SEE-II remains a challenge.
• Further research is needed to improve the fidelity of signed English systems used in educational settings.