RESEARCH
I am currently Associate Professor of Speech Pathology & Audiology and Director of the Sign Language Acquisition Lab at Miami University. From 2011-2014 I was the recipient of a National Research Service Award from the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), one of the National Institutes of Health. This award helped me to found the Deaf Autism Research Project, the first and largest investigation of the effects of autism on the linguistic and cognitive development of deaf children.

My research has primarily focused on how children learn language, particularly under special circumstances. In recent years, I have investigated how deaf children with autism spectrum disorders learn American Sign Language, with an emphasis on the interaction between social difficulties and language development. This type of research can help us better understand autism spectrum disorders in general, and shed light on the processes needed to acquire language.

Check out my academia.edu page or learn more about my published work below.
PAPERS DESCRIBING THE LANGUAGE AND COGNITION OF DEAF CHILDREN ON THE AUTISM SPECTRUM:
  1. Shield, A., Igel, M., & Meier, R.P. (2022). Are palm reversals the pronoun reversals of sign language? Evidence from a fingerspelling task. Frontiers in Psychology. 13:953019. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.953019
  2. Shield, A., & Sampson, T. (2020). Research on deafness and ASD: Challenges, opportunities, and goals. In Deafness: Current Perspectives and Research Developments. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers. ​
  3. Shield, A., Igel, M., Randall, K., & Meier, R.P. (2020). The source of palm orientation errors in the signing of children with ASD: Imitative, motoric, or both? Brain Sciences. doi: 10.3390/brainsci10050268
  4. Shield, A., Knapke, K., Henry, M., Srinivasan, S., & Bhat, A. (2017). Impaired praxis in gesture imitation by deaf children with autism spectrum disorder. Autism & Developmental Language Impairments.
  5. ​Shield, A., Cooley, F., & Meier, R.P. (2017). Sign language echolalia in deaf children with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.
  6. Bhat, A.N., Srinivasan, S.M., Woxholdt, C., & Shield, A. (2016). Differences in praxis performance and receptive language during fingerspelling between deaf children with and without autism spectrum disorder. Autism. doi: 10.1177/1362361316672179​
  7. Shield, A., Pyers, J., Martin, A., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2016). Relations between language and cognition in native-signing children with autism spectrum disorder. Autism Research. doi: 10.1002/aur.1621
  8. Shield, A., Meier, R.P., & Tager-Flusberg, H. (2015). The use of sign language pronouns by native-signing children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 45, 2128-2145.​
  9. Shield, A. (2014). Preliminary findings of similarities and differences in the speech and sign language of children with autism. Seminars in Speech and Language, 35, 309-320.
  10. Shield, A., & Meier, R.P. (2014). Personal pronoun avoidance in deaf children with autism. In W. Orman & M.J. Valleau (Eds.), Proceedings of the 38th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (403-415). Cascadilla Press.
  11. Shield, A. & Meier, R.P. (2013). The acquisition of sign language by deaf children with autism spectrum disorder. In D. Quinto-Pozos (Ed.), Multilingual Aspects of Signed Language Communication and Disorder (90-122). Multilingual Matters.
  12. Shield, A.,& Meier, R.P (2012). Palm reversal errors in native-signing children with autism. Journal of Communication Disorders, 45, 439-454.

PAPERS ABOUT CLINICAL PRACTICE:
  1. ​Shield, A., Mood, D., Salamy, N., & Henner, J. (2021). Assessing signed language development in deaf/signing children with autism spectrum disorder. In W. Mann (Ed.), Handbook of Language Assessment across Modalities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  2. Frisbie, A., Shield, A., Mood, D., Salamy, N., & Henner, J. (2021). Discussion of issues related to assessment of signed or spoken language development in children with autism spectrum disorder. In W. Mann (Ed.), Handbook of Language Assessment across Modalities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  3. Shield, A., Neild, R., & Graham, P. (2020). Educational strategies for deaf children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Perspectives on Early Childhood Psychology and Education.
  4. Graham, P., Neild, R., & Shield, A. (2020). Increasing social awareness for deaf children on the autism spectrum: Innovative strategies. Odyssey: New Directions in Deaf Education.
  5. Mood, D., & Shield, A. (2014). Clinical use of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-Second Edition with children who are deaf. Seminars in Speech and Language, 35, 288-300.

PAPERS ABOUT THEORETICAL ISSUES IN LINGUISTICS:
  1. Shield, A., Igel, M., Randall, K., & Meier, R.P. (2020). The source of palm orientation errors in the signing of children with ASD: Imitative, motoric, or both? Brain Sciences. doi: 10.3390/brainsci10050268
  2. ​Shield, A.,& Meier, R.P. (2018). Learning an embodied visual language: Four imitation strategies available to sign learners. Frontiers in Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00811​

PAPERS ABOUT CHILDHOOD APRAXIA OF SPEECH:
  1. Chenausky, K., Baker, A., & Shield, A. (2022). Predictors of supplementary sign use in school-aged children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools.
  2. Chenausky, K.V., Gagné, D., Stipancic, K.L., Shield, A., & Green, J. (2021). The relationship between single-word speech severity and intelligibility in childhood apraxia of speech. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10. 1044/2021_JSLHR-21-00213
  3. Chenausky, K., Brignell, A., Morgan, A., Gagne, D., Norton, D., Tager-Flusberg, H., Schlaug, G., Shield, A., & Green, J. (2020). Factor analysis of signs of childhood apraxia of speech. Journal of Communication Disorders.

PAPERS ABOUT AUTISM IN HEARING CHILDREN:
  1. Shield, A., Wang, X., Bone, D., Narayanan, S., & Grossman, R.B. (2020). Linguistic and prosodic correlates of rapid social judgments of children and adolescents with and without ASD. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics. doi: 10.1080/02699206.2020.177177
  2. Mazzaggio, G., & Shield, A. (2020). The production of pronouns and verb inflections by Italian children with ASD: A new dataset in a null subject language. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. doi: 10.1007/s10803-019-04349-7

PAPERS ABOUT LANGUAGE AND COGNITION IN TYPICALLY-DEVELOPING DEAF CHILDREN:
  1. Goldin-Meadow, S., Shield, A., Lenzen, D., Herzig, M., & C. Padden (2012). The gestures ASL signers use tell us when they are ready to learn math. Cognition, 123, 448-453.