We are pleased to announce that the Deafness Cognition and Language (DCAL) Research Centre
at University College London has an exciting opportunity for
three, one-week paid placements.
As a paid research intern,
you can learn first-hand what is involved in conducting research
in the areas of linguistics, psycholinguistics
and language development
in the context of deafness and sign language.
Alternatively, as a professional services intern,
you can see what goes on behind the scenes of a research centre
and work in our Professional Services team,
this may include but not limited to science communication,
event management
and community engagement.
You will gain valuable higher education experience in these areas.
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2/2/2023
Are you Deaf and interested in Language or Psychology Research?
Paid Research Placement Opportunities.
We are pleased to announce that the Deafness Cognition and Language (DCAL) Research Centre
at University College London has an exciting opportunity for
three, one-week paid placements.
As a paid research intern,
you can learn first-hand what is involved in conducting research
in the areas of linguistics, psycholinguistics
and language development
in the context of deafness and sign language.
Alternatively, as a professional services intern,
you can see what goes on behind the scenes of a research centre
and work in our Professional Services team,
this may include but not limited to science communication,
event management
and community engagement.
You will gain valuable higher education experience in these areas.
Intern criteria:
• Deaf
• Knowledge of British Sign Language (BSL)
• Degree (or studying/planning to study)
in linguistics, psychology
or related areas if ap
59
12/7/2022
We currently have 3 exciting projects running at DCAL that investigate the relationship between language and literacy development. One study looks at language comprehension in deaf children and is one of the largest research projects that involves deaf children here at DCAL. The goals of the project are to adapt a comprehension task from American Sign Language into British Sign Language (BSL) and to explore the effects of BSL vocabulary and BSL syntax toward deaf children’s comprehension of BSL. For this study, we will need 300 deaf children between age 4 and 18 years old so if you work at a school, know of resource base schools with deaf children, or are a parent/caregiver of a deaf child, do get in touch with Patrick Rosenburg and Kate Rowley at p.rosenburg@ucl.ac.uk. For more information, see our Development Research Page: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/research/deafness-cognition-and-language-dcal/research-dcal/development-research
In another study, we are investigating the relationshi
48
12/2/2022
We were saddened by the passing of Frances Elton earlier this year. Frances worked at DCAL for many years. Frances had a long career in research and teaching and her work influenced a great many people. We will be holding a memorial event in honour of Frances to celebrate her life’s work. This will be on Saturday 21st January from 2pm to 5.30pm. There will be various speakers and we will be doing a premier showing of the final version of ‘Lightwave’, a film developed by Rubbena Aurengzeb-Tariq and Prof. Bencie Woll, see: https://www.rubbena.com/lightwave-trellis-2020
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12/2/2022
Our research on the deaf brain was featured on the cover of Brain, one of the most prestigious neuroscience journals.
In our new paper we found that regions of the brain that in hearing people are involved in understanding sounds have different roles in deaf people. We found that these regions in deaf people are involved in higher-order cognitive functions, which are the mental processes that allow people to learn and interact with the world. We also found that language skills, either in sign or spoken language, predict performance in cognitive tasks. This highlights the importance of early access to language for the development of cognitive skills, independently of the modality of the language. The art on the cover is by artist Rubbena Aurangzeb-Tariq. Rubbena is an artist and facilitator whose work concerns culture and deaf identity. In this work she asks ‘Why is it that given the same information, we perceive things differently?’. This collaboration is a great example of science a
50
12/2/2022
Another year has flown by and at DCAL we are trying to adapt back to ‘pre-covid’ ways of working. COVID brought challenges, but it also pushed forward some positive changes too. Like everyone, we are now much more used to having online talks from remote presenters. It has been great to have DCAL presentations this year from around the world.
This year has also been a fantastic year for BSL and the representation of deaf people in the media. This summer the BSL Act was passed by Parliament. DCAL staff and students were delighted to join so many people on sunny days in the Spring in Trafalgar Square to campaign for this and then to celebrate the approval of the Act. This of course is just one step in ensuring greater access to BSL for deaf people. There is much work to be done and we hope that research we conduct at DCAL can contribute towards this. We have selected a summary of some of the DCAL highlights from this year for you. We hope you enjoy learning more about what we have been
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12/2/2022
Sign Language Linguistics Research
This year we had several publications in sign linguistics, including a paper on sociolinguistic variation in mouthing in the BSL Corpus, and a chapter on the future of sign language corpora in a new edited volume on sign language corpora from Gallaudet University Press. We have continued work on several sign linguistics projects including writing up papers on sign sentence types, questions, and negation in BSL, and collecting data for a project on sign order for an ESRC funded project on language evolution. In sign language technology, we published a conference paper on tools for automatically identifying sign boundaries. With colleagues from University of Surrey and Oxford, we organised a workshop on Sign Language Recognition Translation and Production. We also continue to work on EASIER, a large EU project on automatic translation processes for European sign languages with partners around Europe including the European Union of the Deaf.
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12/2/2022
Resources for research and for the community
We have a range of resources from all of our research projects and findings. The DCAL Research Data Archive is a publicly available data archive of our studies of language, communication and cognition. Browse the data from our unique projects here and learn more about our findings!
The British Sign Language (BSL) Corpus is a publicly accessible, on-line record of BSL used by Deaf people in the UK. It’s a collection of video clips showing Deaf people using BSL. You can also explore BSL SignBank, which has approximately 2500 BSL signs developed from the BSL Corpus. In other words, BSL signs directly from the deaf community!
For qualified professionals and researchers working with deaf children and adults, the DCAL Assessment Portal hosts eight language and cognition assessments. These assessments can be used to assess language abilities and language development in deaf adults and children and assess deaf signers where there are concerns ab
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12/2/2022