NSF Award For Research on Developmental Language Disorders of Signed Languages

David Quinto-Pozos, assistant professor of linguistics, has received NSF funding through the Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2) Center.  VL2 is an NSF Science of Learning Center for which Gallaudet University in Washington DC serves as the lead institution. Although we know much about disorders that affect the acquisition of spoken languages in childhood, there has to date been little research on developmental language disorders that may affect the acquisition of signed languages as first languages. Prof. Quinto-Pozos’s award, entitled “Examining Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Uses of Space in Children with Signed Language Disorders”, provides funding (almost $51,000 for academic year 2009-10) to study individual cases of signed language disorders in native-signing deaf children. In particular, Prof. Quinto-Pozos is interested in the question of whether, and how, performance on non-linguistic spatial tasks predicts language problems with ASL.  This work has the potential to provide important information for the development of signed language therapies.