Current DCAL and DCAL- associated projects
Go to Associated Projects
DCAL Projects
Families with Deaf Children Project (Theory of Mind)
What it is about:
This project investigates how deaf children communicate with their families. The collected data will help determine how deaf children develop and understanding of the social world around them. Results from this study will help to make intervention programmes be more effective.
Who to contact for more information: Gary Morgan
BSL normative data and assessment tools
What it is about:
This crossgroup strand aims to collect norms about BSL signs and to
use those to develop assessment tools for BSL. These tools will help
us identify signers with different levels of fluency in BSL and will
be of use to researchers, tutors, trainers, clinicians and other
professionals who work in and with the Deaf community.
Who to contact for more information: Kearsy Cormier
Sign Language Interpreter Language and Interpreting Aptitude
What it is about:
This longitudinal study uses a battery of language, motor/gesture and
psychological tests to compare expert sign language interpreters with
those in undergraduate interpreter training programs.
Who to contact for more information: Chris Stone
Sign Language Phonology Project
What it is about:
This project investigates how deaf children between the ages of 3 and 11 years learn different aspects of phonology in sign language, such as hand shapes and movement to help us understand more about the nature of BSL and how it is acquired.
Who to contact for more information: Wolfgang Mann
Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in deaf children who use sign language
What it is about:
The SLI project is the first major study of language impairment in signing deaf children. The project aims to better understand and characterise SLI in deaf children and to develop assessments in order to identify language impairment in signing deaf children.
Who to contact for more information: Kathryn Mason
Voice hallucinations in deaf people with schizophrenia
What it is about:
This project explored the perceptual characteristics of voice hallucinations
in deaf people with schizophrenia.
Who to contact for more information: Joanna Atkinson
Deaf-blind research projects
What it is about:
The following projects explore the signing of
individuals who have reduced visual field as a result of Usher syndrome,
and signers who have become totally blind, specifically:
- the role of visual feedback in signing
- perception and production of facial information by blind signers
- the role of vision in spatial grammar
- fMRI of tactilely and visually perceived fingerspelling
Who to contact for more information: Bencie Woll
Associated Projects
Back to topSynesthesia and Sign Language Project
What it is about:
This joint project with the University of Sussex investigates synaesthesia, a perceptual condition where people have extra perceptions such as colours for letters, or tastes for words, as it applies for Deaf and hearing signers. The particular type of synaesthesia the researchers are looking at is called Sign-to-Colour where people see colours when they sign or see others sign.
Who to contact for more information: Joanna Atkinson
Translation and norming of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) into BSL
What it is about:
This study is developing a BSL version of the BDI for use in the clinical
assessment of depression by professionals working in the field of deafness
and mental health.
Who to contact for more information: Joanna Atkinson
Working memory and sign language in Deaf children
What it is about:
This project investigates the relationship between language and working
memory in children who are deaf and acquiring British Sign Language as their
native language, and in particular:
(1) How much variation in BSL skills in
typically developing deaf children can be accounted for by variation in
phonological and visuo-spatial working memory skills?
(2) Are working memory
skills impaired in deaf children with atypical sign language development?
(3)
For both groups of children, what is the relationship between working memory
abilities and the use of classifiers?
Who to contact for more information: Chloe Marshall
British Sign Language Corpus Project
What it is about:
This collaborative project has two main aims:
(1)to create a collection (a "corpus") of video clips showing Deaf people
using BSL that will be put on the internet and
(2) to carry out
research using this collection into BSL grammar and vocabulary,
variation in BSL across the country and how BSL is changing.
Who to contact for more information: Adam Schembri
British Sign Language: Quality Embedding of the Discipline (BSL:QED)
What it is about:
The main aim of this project is to establish a new on-line curriculum for the teaching of British Sign Language (BSL) at HE level.
Who to contact for more information: Frances Elton
Web-based British Sign Language Vocabulary Test
What is it about:
The goal of this project is to develop a vocabulary
assessment for BSL that can be administered to school-age children through the internet and explore the feasability of this format.
Who to contact for more information: Wolfgang Mann
Expression of Perspective,
Location and Motion in British Sign Language (PaLM)
What it is about:
This project looks at how perspective is expressed in BSL through
role shift/constructed action and how this interacts with the
expression of motion and location via classifier constructions. Data
are from native and non-native deaf adult signers, and also
longitudinal data from deaf children collected at 3 stages over 5 years.
Who to contact for more information: Kearsy Cormier
Early British Sign Language Development (EBSLD)
What it is about:
This project forms part of the 'Positive Support in the Lives of Deaf Children and their Families' project and involves developing a BSL assessment for children aged 8-36
months. The assessment is an adapted version of the MacArthur
Communicative Development Inventory (CDI), a standard tool used with spoken languages. The BSL-version of the CDI will be published in the next
few months.
Who to contact for more information: Bencie Woll
Imaging the Deaf Brain
What it is about:
The main aim of our project is to learn more about what happens in the brain when people watch a person sign or speak.
Who to contact for more information: Bencie Woll
Executive Sub-Committee on Innovations in
Teaching Learning and Assessment (ESCILTA)
What it is about:
The aim of this project is to develop teaching
and learning material for use both on-line and off-line by BSL learners at
UCL
Who to contact for more information: Frances Elton
The neurobiological basis of language: insights into late language
acquisition and reading from deafness
What it is about:
In this project we use different behavioural and neuroimaging methodologies
to find out how the brain processes language. We do this by working with
people who are born profoundly deaf and by looking at different aspects of
their language skill such as BSL processing, speechreading and reading. In
particular we are interested in the impact of age of language acquisition on
how the brain processes language.
Who to contact for more information: Mairead MacSweeney
Positive Support in the Lives of Deaf Children and their Families
What it is about:
This project aims to capitalise on the current implementation of the Newborn Hearing Screening Programme (NHSP) to monitor key outcomes for deaf children in the first few years of life and their families and to relate these to the details of specific interventions. The key outcomes currently being monitored are language, communication, play and social behaviour and motor and physical development.
In addition, the project aims to measure the type and extent of support and intervention, including family functioning, and to relate these to outcomes. From this we hope to be able to disseminate more robust information upon
which parents may make informed choices and services may base their
improvements in provision so that early development is likely to be optimal
and the social exclusion of deaf children reduced.
Who to contact for more information: Bencie Woll
Sign and gesture (constructed action in signed languages)
What it is about:
We are investigating ways in which signers of different sign
languages take advantage of constructed action (the signer's use of
parts of his/her body to portray characteristics of a referent) to
complement the linguistic part of a message. Data are from British,
American, and Mexican Sign Languages.
Who to contact for more information: Kearsy Cormier
Sign Segmentation Project
What it is about:
This is a three-year ESRC-funded project which looks at how Deaf
people process language when watching BSL signs. Learning a language
is the result of many things working together, and we are interested
in finding out whether this is the same for Deaf people as it is for
hearing people. We are mainly interested in how signers understand
where each sign starts and finishes during continuous signing.
Who to contact for more information: Gary Morgan
Translation and standardization of the TEIQ into British Sign Language.
What is it on:
The study will develop and pilot the first ever measure of Trait
Emotional Intelligence designed to assess personal disposition in Deaf
British Sign Language (BSL) users.
Who to contact for more information: Chris Stone
