Since 2007, our collaborative research across numerous institutions in the United States (e.g., UNM, Gallaudet, Penn State, UC-Irvine, Rochester Institute of Technology) and beyond (e.g., U of Hamburg, Humboldt University-Berlin) has explored whether semantic overlap in two languages is sufficient to activate cross-language lexical processing in deaf and hearing signers. We find that deaf adult bilinguals showed simultaneous activation of ASL signs and English print despite no direct phonetic overlap. We also find evidence for connections between signs and printed words among deaf middle-school students. Furthermore, the studies show that both younger and older deaf signers are much faster at making semantic decisions compared to hearing non-signers. This finding leads to a new line of investigation pursuing the question: what cognitive factors explain why deaf signers process printed words significantly faster than hearing non-signers?​