Early detection of Alzheimer’s Disease is critical to obtaining treatment, counseling, and planning for the person with ALZ and other forms of dementia and their families. Very few neuropsychological tests are available for assessment of older deaf adults who regularly use both American Sign Language and English. The proposed studies will develop tests and methods for language and cognitive assessment of life-long deaf seniors, will begin to establish the cognitive profile of deaf AD, and will explore the possible effects of deafness, and its associated reduction of exposure to spoken language early vs. late in life on cognitive test performance.
This research is being conducted in collaboration with Dr. Tamar Gollan at the University of California, San Diego, Dr. Peter Hauser at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and Dr. Michael (Mike) McKee at the University of Michigan.
Thus far, we have found that when testing “list memory” (the ability to remember short lists of signs or words), it is best to test deaf seniors in both ASL and English. Deaf adults should be allowed to recall English words using ASL sign translations, rather than using spoken English. Testing in both languages maximizes performance because English memory is stronger for immediate list learning, but ASL memory is stronger after a delay. Thus, a complete characterization of memory requires testing deaf older adults in both languages (Camilliere et al., 2026).
Funding
This research is supported by the National Institute on Aging (AG074928).
Publications
- Camilliere, S., Emmorey, K., Hauser, P., Contreras, J., McKee, M., & Gollan, T. (2026). Influence of testing language and aging on verbal list memory in deaf ASL-English bilinguals. Neuropsychology. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/neu0001065
- Emmorey, K. (2023). Ten things you should know about sign languages. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 32(5), 387-394. https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214231173071
Presentations
- Camilliere, S., Emmorey, K., Hauser, P., Contreras, J., McKee, M., & Gollan, T. (2025). Influence of testing language and aging on verbal list learning in deaf ASL-English bilinguals. Poster presented at the Society for the Neurobiology of Language, September, Washington, D.C.
- Camilliere, S., Emmorey, K., Hauser, P., McKee, M., & Gollan, T. (2023). Cross-modal, cross-language Stroop effects in Deaf ASL-English bilinguals. Talk presented at the Psychonomic Society Meeting, November, San Francisco, California.