Communication assessment of deaf persons with language dysfluency

Includes bibliographical references (pages 59-71)Deaf individuals with language dysfluency are faced with barriers and misplaced viewpoints, by mental health providers, when deaf individuals attempt to gain access to mental health services. The barriers often cause deaf individuals to be assessed using a medical-pathological construct, resulting in a misdiagnosis followed by erroneous delivery of social services. According to Long and Alvares (1995, p. 3) and Moeller (1988), these assessments do not provide a comprehensive view of the deaf individual's functional language skills. The objective of this project is to create a communication assessment protocol that retains the strengths of previous assessments while adding a new concept, i.e., a standardized signing skills inventory section (DVD) of the protocol. A second goal is to present a socio-cultural linguistic perspective by discussing the communication accommodation theory (CAT) convergence style for clinicians. The convergence style moves the clinician towards a communication behavior more accommodating to language deprived deaf individuals in order to create a culturally affirmative perspective