The study of human language and cognition has traditionally focused on users of spoken languages, acquired by ‘ear’ early in life. This explores what the study of deaf people can add to our understanding of human language and cognition. Many people born deaf use a visual language, acquired by ‘eye’, often outside the normal timeframe for language acquisition. The study of deaf people and sign languages are an essential test of universality, but also widens our sphere of thinking from beyond the speech modality, enabling us to study rich aspects of multi-modal human communication that would be missed if we only focused on spoken languages. 
This module provides you with up to date knowledge of deafness and sign language research with lectures presented by active researchers from the world-leading UCL Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre. Teaching will focus on visual communication with an emphasis on visual elements of spoken language communication (including speech reading, gesture and reading) and on sign languages. We will study the psychological and neurological processes that are involved in visual communication. Throughout, there will be special emphasis on modality issues: the extent to which spoken and signed language processing is shaped by the visual-motor modality in which they occur.

The course aims to:

familiarise students with research in the following areas: early signed and spoken language development, sign linguistics with an emphasis on British Sign Language research, the deaf brain – including processing of silent speech as well as sign language, and developmental and acquired sign language impairments.
It is expected that by the end of the module students will have an understanding of the social and theoretical issues which impact on research in this area, understand issues involved in designing and undertaking research with these populations, and be able to critically read the relevant literature. The module will be taught by UCL staff who are active researchers in the area of language, cognition and deafness.

Undergraduate enquiries to d.newton@ucl.ac.uk
Postgraduate enquiries to pals.langsci@ucl.ac.uk