Sociocognition Issues Affecting the Working Relationship between the Deaf Professional and the Interpreter

The focus of this paper is to review the literature on socio-cognition issues for deaf graduate students and professionals working with interpreters in order to assess its usefulness in developing key conditions under which deaf graduate student/professional- interpreterworkingrelationshipsmightbeimplementedmoreeffectively. Theories on cognitive dissonance and stereotyping will be examined in relation to their possible implications in the working relationship, and included in this review if they related to the development and maintenance of an ongoing working relationship between the deaf professional and the interpreter. The concept, cognitive dissonance, will be introduced in this discussion and examined for its relevance to the inconsistency between attitudes and behaviors that emerge in the deaf professional or the interpreter as they enter the working relationship. This paper may provide insights into the mechanisms of developing an ongoing working relationship which may guide development of advanced or specialized interpreter training programs

Social Media Use and HIV Screening Uptake Among Deaf Adults in the United States: Cross-Sectional Survey Study

BACKGROUND: About 46% of US adults obtain recommended HIV screening at least once during their lifetime. There is little knowledge of screening rates among deaf and hard-of-hearing adults who primarily use American Sign Language (ASL), or of social media as a potentially efficacious route for HIV prevention outreach, despite lower HIV/AIDS-specific health literacy and potentially higher HIV seropositivity rates than hearing peers. OBJECTIVE: We investigated both the likelihood of HIV screening uptake among deaf adults in the past year and over one year ago, and the relationship between social media use and HIV screening uptake among deaf adult ASL users. METHODS: The Health Information National Trends Survey in ASL was administered to 1340 deaf US adults between 2015-2018. Modified Poisson with robust standard errors was used to assess the relationship between social media usage as a predictor and HIV screening as an outcome (screened more than one year ago, screened within the past year, and never been screened), after adjusting for sociodemographics and sexually transmitted disease (STD) covariates. RESULTS: The estimated lifetime prevalence of HIV screening uptake among our sample was 54% (719/1340), with 32% (429/1340) in the past year. Being of younger age, male gender, black, lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer, or having some college education or a prior STD were associated with HIV screening uptake. Adjusting for correlates, social media use was significantly associated with HIV screening in the past year, compared to either lifetime or never. CONCLUSIONS: Screening falls well short of universal screening targets, with gaps among heterosexual, female, Caucasian, or older deaf adults. HIV screening outreach may not be effective because of technological or linguistic inaccessibility, rendering ASL users an underrecognized minority group. However, social media is still a powerful tool, particularly among younger deaf adults at risk for HIV

Discourses Of Prejudice In The professions: The Case Of Sign Languages

There is no evidence that learning a natural human language is cognitively harmful to children. To the contrary, multilingualism has been argued to be beneficial to all. Nevertheless, many professionals advise the parents of deaf children that their children should not learn a sign language during their early years, despite strong evidence across many research disciplines that sign languages are natural human languages. Their recommendations are based on a combination of misperceptions about (1) the difficulty of learning a sign language, (2) the effects of bilingualism, and particularly bimodalism, (3) the bona fide status of languages that lack a written form, (4) the effects of a sign language on acquiring literacy, (5) the ability of technologies to address the needs of deaf children and (6) the effects that use of a sign language will have on family cohesion. We expose these misperceptions as based in prejudice and urge institutions involved in educating professionals concerned with the healthcare, raising and educating of deaf children to include appropriate information about first language acquisition and the importance of a sign language for deaf children. We further urge such professionals to advise the parents of deaf children properly, which means to strongly advise the introduction of a sign language as soon as hearing loss is detected

Levels of Emotion Valence and Arousal in American Sign Language

The Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW; Bradley & Lang, 1999) scale is a widely used instrument for valence and arousal response in English. A person whose first language is American Sign Language (ASL) might process the English emotion words differently. We hypothesized that ASL users might provide different valence and arousal ratings for emotion words in ASL, and a separate normative database might be necessary for this population. Forty-two Deaf adult signers completed ratings for the English and ASL conditions. Results showed that the rating for the arousal were similar for both conditions. However, the valence ratings were different, which could be explained by the different word frequency among the ASL users. This raises a need to create a separate valence rating normative database in ASL

Insights from U.S. deaf patients: Interpreters’ presence and receptive skills matter in patient-centered communication care

In the U.S., deaf individuals who use sign language have a legislated right to communication access in the healthcare system, which is often addressed through the provision of signed language interpreters. However, little is known about deaf patients’ perception of interpreter presence, its impact on their disclosure of medical information to physicians, and whether this perception affects their assessment of physicians’ patient-centered communication behaviors (PCC). A total of 811 deaf adults responded to questions on a bilingual ASL-English online survey about their experiences with interpreters and physicians. Logistic regression analysis was used to assess the relationship between deaf patients’ perception of interpreters’ presence with disclosure of medical information and deaf patients’ ratings of their physicians’ patient-centered communication behaviors. The majority of deaf respondents reported feeling that an interpreter’s presence does not interfere with disclosure of medical information to their provider; however, approximately 27% responded that an interpreter’s presence does interfere with their disclosure of medical information. After controlling for correlates of physicians’ patient-centered communication behaviors, the negative perception of interpreters’ presence was associated with 1) low ratings of interpreters’ ability to understand their signed communication, and 2) low ratings of physicians’ patient-centered communication behaviors. Deaf patients’ perception of interpreters’ interference with disclosure of medical information to physicians has implications for trust relationships between the deaf patient and the interpreter, as well as between the deaf patient and physician. Understanding the importance of establishing trust in interpreter-mediated healthcare encounters may foster additional training of interpreters’ receptive skills and inform physician’s patient-centered care for deaf patients

Live Captions in Virtual Reality (VR)

Few VR applications and games implement captioning of speech and audio cues, which either inhibits or prevents access of their application by deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) users, new language learners, and other caption users. Additionally, little to no guidelines exist on how to implement live captioning on VR headsets and how it may differ from traditional television captioning. To help fill the void of information behind user preferences of different VR captioning styles, we conducted a study with eight DHH participants to test three caption movement behaviors (headlocked, lag, and appear) while watching live-captioned, single-speaker presentations in VR. Participants answered a series of Likert scale and open-ended questions about their experience. Participant preferences were split, but the majority of participants reported feeling comfortable with using live captions in VR and enjoyed the experience. When participants ranked the caption behaviors, there was almost an equal divide between the three types tested. IPQ results indicated each behavior had similar immersion ratings, however participants found headlocked and lag captions more user-friendly than appear captions. We suggest that participants may vary in caption preference depending on how they use captions, and that providing opportunities for caption customization is best

Automatic Speech Recogniton Systems as Tools to Enhance Spoken Communication in the Workplace

Abstract Text: The workplace presents many challenges for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, partially because a wide array of strategies to accommodate the communication needs of people with typical hearing, and flexibility in their use, are essential for upward mobility (Foster & Walter, 1992). Job-related demands also make the workplace a more difficult communication situation for those who are deaf compared to those who are hard of hearing (Boutin & Wilson, 2009). Both groups, however, tend to experience less success in securing higher level jobs than their peers with typical hearing and are limited by level of college degree (Kelly, Quagliata, DeMartino, & Perotti, 2015). For both deaf and hard-of-hearing workers, communication on the job reportedly involves English about 80% of the time, whether through writing, speech, or sign language with speech (Kelly et al., 2015). Given the spoken-language communication requirements of the workplace, to what extent does current speech recognition technology, especially as available in mobile apps, enhance access by deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals? Are speech recognition apps usable tools to enhance exchanges between deaf or hard-of-hearing persons and individuals who have typical hearing, whether it be a coworker or a boss? To investigate the capabilities of newer Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) applications/software as tools to support auditory access of spoken communication, we asked 26 deaf and hard-of-hearing college students to use a variety of applications and software in everyday, job-related settings and to provide evaluative feedback on their experiences. In this workshop our evaluators\u27 findings will be shared. Additionally, participants will learn about outcomes trials with a beta app called Ava by Transcense Labs. AVA focuses on a seamless conversational experience for deaf and hard-of-hearing persons and is described as being like Siri, but for group conversations. The app shows a real-time, color-coded transcript of a discussion for use in situations such as meetings and on-the-job conferences. References: Boutin, D. L., and Wilson, K. B. (2009). Professional jobs and hearing loss: A comparison of deaf and hard of hearing consumers. Journal of Rehabilitation. 75(1): 36–40. Kelly, R., Quagliata, A., DeMartino, R., & Perotti, V. (2015). Deaf workers: Educated and employed, but limited in career growth. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Education of the Deaf. Athens, Greece

Ensuring Language Acquisition For Deaf Children: What Linguists Can Do

Parents of small deaf children need guidance on constructing home and school environments that affect normal language acquisition. They often turn to physicians and spiritual leaders and, increasingly, the internet. These sources can be underinformed about crucial issues, such as matters of brain plasticity connected to the risk of linguistic deprivation, and delay or disruption in the development of cognitive skills interwoven with linguistic ability. We have formed a team of specialists in education, linguistics, pediatric medicine, and psychology, and at times specialists in theology and in law have joined our group. We argue that deaf children should be taught a sign language in the early years. This does not preclude oral-aural training and assistive technology. With a strong first language (a sign language), the child can become bilingual (with the written form of the ambient spoken language and, perhaps, the spoken form), accruing the benefits of bilingualism. We have published in medical journals, addressing primary care physicians, in a journal with a spiritual-leader readership, and in a health-law journal. Articles in progress address medical educators and practitioners. Team members present findings at conferences, work on lobbying and legislative efforts with the National Association of the Deaf, and spread the word at conferences of target audiences. We share our work in Word format, so that anyone can easily appropriate it for our common interests. One of our articles has been downloaded over 27,000 times (as of April 2014), and we are asked to consult with committees in other countries as they draft national policies