Cerebral laterality in deaf and hearing children.

Studied the development of lateralization of cerebral function in 20 hearing and 20 prelingually deaf children using the concurrent task paradigm. Ss were aged 5–6 and 11–12 yrs; all were right-handed. Concurrent processing of a nonverbal task did not cause a selective hand impairment monitored by a manual tapping task. However, deaf Ss were more impaired than hearing Ss in both age groups. Using a concurrent verbal task, both groups manifested a selective impairment of right-hand performance. The deaf also showed a greater left-hand decrement than did the hearing Ss. This result suggests that hemispheric specialization may be less apparent in the deaf than in hearing children. The factor of cognitive task difficulty is suggested as an explanation of these results. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Color-object paired associates in deaf and hearing children with and without response competition.

Deaf and hearing Ss, aged 6 and 10, were compared in 2 nonverbally presented paired-associates tasks. One condition used neutral color stimuli unrelated to toy response objects and another condition had colors systematically related to the same objects to provide interfering response competition. Age differences were observed, while task interacted with deafness such that hearing but not deaf Ss were impeded by the interference condition relative to the neutral condition. It was concluded that deaf Ss showed no perceptual rigidity and that covert verbalizations of hearing Ss or experiential poverty in deaf Ss produced the differential task effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning and use of logical symbols by deaf and hearing subjects.

16 11-17 yr. old deaf Ss were as able as hearing Ss matched on age, IQ, and socioeconomic background in learning and using logical concepts, and superior to hearing Ss matched on written language comprehension, IQ, and socioeconomic background in learning these concepts. Verbal language comprehension apparently does not possess an exclusive determining influence in learning and grasping the significance of these concepts. It seems justifiable that the ability to identify correspondences between logical symbolic expressions and their stimulus combinations, to verbalize accurately the rules of these correspondences, and to use learned symbols in new contexts constitute increasingly more difficult levels of conceptual behavior. Supplementary verbalization of rules leads to more successful transfer than learning the rules without correct verbal formulations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Research-based language intervention strategies adapted for deaf and hard of hearing children

Strategies found to facilitate the language development of young, hearing children are reviewed in this paper, and adaptations and examples for use with deaf and hard-of-hearing children are provided as alternatives to simply advising professionals and parents to increase the quantity of conversation with these children. It is suggested that adults accelerate the language acquisition of deaf and hard-of-hearing students by capitalizing on the linguistic opportunities provided in particular environments, rearranging environments, being responsive to indications that children have comprehended messages and are open to risk communication, and specifically by intervening on form, content, and use skills. The author challenges professionals to document empirically the usefulness of each language intervention technique presented here.     

Peer interaction in young deaf children: The effect of partner hearing status and familiarity.

14 deaf 54–83 mo olds were videotaped playing once with each of 4 partners: a familiar deaf playmate, a familiar hearing playmate, an unfamiliar hearing child who was a playmate of another deaf child, and an unfamiliar hearing child who had little experience playing with deaf children. 21 hearing and 7 deaf playmates participated. Deaf Ss rarely used language, and formal language use was not related to measures of interaction or play even when playing with another deaf child. Instead, interaction and pretense seemed to be related to the deaf Ss' nonlinguistic communication abilities. Partner hearing status primarily affected communication, with communication between deaf playmates being more visual (both linguistic and nonlinguistic) and less object-based than communication between deaf and hearing playmates. Familiarity played a larger role than experience in improving interaction between deaf and hearing children. The hearing children were more responsive to and used more visual communication devices with their deaf playmate than an unfamiliar deaf child. But the hearing playmates were no better at playing with an unfamiliar deaf child than were hearing children who had little experience playing with deaf children. Implications for the understanding of young children's communication abilities and for deaf educational programs are discussed. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Communicative interactions of deaf and hearing children in a day care center. An exploratory study

Interactions were observed in a day care center serving deaf and hearing children. Observations focused on eight children (two deaf with deaf parents, two deaf with hearing parents, two hearing with deaf parents and two hearing with hearing parents) between 2 and 3 years of age. Center classes included deaf and hearing teachers and all children were encouraged to sign. Deaf and hearing children alike frequently interacted with other children and teachers whose hearing status differed from their own. However, each group showed a stronger tendency to initiate communication with same hearing status peers. Hearing children displayed the ability to modify their communications modes to match the hearing status of their intended communication partner. Language ability, not hearing status, was associated with the frequency of communication experienced by each child.     

Communication of oral deaf and normally hearing children at 36 months of age

Eighteen orally educated deaf and 18 normally hearing 36-month-old children were observed in a play session with their mother. Communicative behavior of the child was coded for modality and communicative function. Although the oral deaf children used a normal range of functions, both the quantity and proportions differed from normally hearing children. Whereas the normally hearing 3-year-olds used speech almost exclusively, the deaf children exhibited about equal use of speech, vocalizations, and gestures. Spoken language scores of the deaf children at 5 years of age were best predicted by (a) more frequent use of speech at age 36 months, (b) more frequent use of the Statement function, and (c) relatively infrequent use of the Directive function. It is suggested that some communicative functions are more informative or heuristic than others, and that the early use of these functions is most likely to predict later language competence.     

Comparing the mental lexicons of deaf and hearing individuals.

This study compared the organization of verbal concept knowledge in deaf and hearing adults. Such organization has been shown to influence performance by hearing adults on language and memory tasks, but comparisons of deaf and hearing individuals' mental lexicons have not been conducted. A semantic association task was used to estimate the mental lexicons of deaf and hearing adults for a sample of words that were either sound related or not sound related. Estimates of the size of the associative set for a given word and the strength of the relationship between the word and its associates were computed. The associative sets of deaf and hearing adults varied in the coherence and accessibility of the lexical concepts but showed generally high agreement in the strengths of the relationships within the associative sets. Observed similarities and differences between deaf and hearing adults were comparable for sound-related and not-sound-related words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An assessment of some oral and manual-language skills of hearing children of deaf parents

The historical concept of reform is useful as an aid to understand the modern rise of family practice education. Beginning about 1890, historians have identified several themes of reform in the United States which have been expressed culturally, politically, and socially. Each of these themes, agrarianism, bureaucratization of the professions, and utopianism, has influenced medicine and medical education--first at the turn of the century in the activities of the AMA in promoting public health and in establishing the natural sciences as a basis for medical education and practice. Since the end of World War II, additional reform themes have become visible which are also influencing medicine. Among these are humanism, consumerism, and the women's movement. It is the author's thesis that the present vitality and future development of family practice as a discipline is more dependent on its capacity and willingness to be identified with these expressions of reform than on its negotiations and compromises within the medical education establishment.     

Visual short-term memory in the hearing and the deaf.

Tested 9 deaf and 9 normal 15-27 yr olds on their ability to report letters, shapes, and nonsense figures from a tachistoscopic presentation. Deaf Ss performed worse than hearing Ss on recall of figural information, thereby supporting a linguistic coding hypothesis. However, there was no difference between the groups on position information, and letter confusions were primarily visual in both groups. Findings suggest that more attention should be given to visual short-term memory in theoretical models of memory. Formation of the icon was apparently not affected by a linguistic deficit, since effects of stimulus duration and type of viewing (continuous vs interrupted) were similar in both hearing and deaf Ss. Significant positive correlations which were found between deaf Ss' school reading scores and their tachistoscopic scores were not interpreted as support for a linguistic coding hypothesis, but rather as support for the notion that the memory skills tested in the experiment may underlie reading ability. (French summary) (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When hearing clients work with a deaf therapist.

Not being able to hear can present significant challenges for the therapist and for the deaf therapist/hearing client dyad. It can also create opportunities. Although the literature indicates that most culturally Deaf therapists work with Deaf clients due to their mutual use of American Sign Language, I describe (a) the background of an audiologically deaf therapist who relies on speech reading rather than sign language, and (b) this therapist's clinical work with hearing clients. Some of the relational dynamics of these treatments are identified, and I conclude by noting how attention to communication can benefit the work of all psychotherapists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Educational conditions related to successful full inclusion programs involving deaf/hard of hearing children

Educators involved in full inclusion programs for deaf or hard of hearing children were asked to rate the impact of these programs on both D/HH and hearing children. Three criteria were used: academic achievement, social adjustment, and self-confidence/esteem. Raters also described the degree to which each of 27 educational conditions were present in their school. These conditions were combined into five categories and scales were constructed for assessing each. chi 2 was employed to discover relationships between educational conditions and the three criteria. Multiple regression analysis was used to predict student outcomes on the basis of the five scales. The impact of full inclusion was more favorable if D/HH children received social encouragement, if a full range of placement options were available, and if teachers and parents supported the program.     

Development of referential communication skills: How familiarity with a listener affects a speaker's production of redundant messages.

Investigated the development of sensitivity to the needs of a listener in 20 1st graders and 20 4th graders. Of interest was whether Ss would vary their production of redundant messages (saying more than the minimal necessary to be informative) as a function of sharing common experiences with a listener. Ss were asked to give messages to a fictitious listener (represented by a drawing) who was supposed to be either a stranger or a friend. Results show that both 1st and 4th graders were more likely to give redundant messages to an unfamiliar listener than to one with whom they shared common experiences. Fourth graders, however, gave a different type of redundant message, one more sensitive to a listener's needs. Fourth graders included several differentiating features in their messages, whereas 1st graders included both differentiating and nondifferentiating features. It is concluded that there were developmental differences in the type of messages given but not in the production of redundancy. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Communication between deaf children and their hearing mothers: the role of language, gesture, and vocalizations

In the present longitudinal study, 20 deaf and 20 hearing children were observed during free play with their hearing mothers when the children were 22 months and 3 years of age. Compared to hearing children, deaf children were severely language delayed, with deaf 3-year-olds using less language (speech or sign) than hearing 22-month-olds. Deaf children communicated primarily through nonlinguistic vocalizations, with increasing use of gesture from 22 months to 3 years of age. Although mothers of deaf children used more visual communication than mothers of hearing children, they still primarily communicated through speech. In addition, deaf children did not visually attend to much of their mothers' communication. Therefore, deaf children received much less communication than hearing children. These results suggest that intervention efforts should be focused on increasing the quantity of perceived linguistic input by the child.     

Cerebral dominance and speech acquisition in deaf children.

In examining the prediction that left cerebral dominance, as indexed by hand and sighting preference, should be a positive accompaniment of speech learning in individuals whose cerebral speech areas are likely to be in the left hemisphere, it was found that over a 10-12 year period of formal education right-handed-right-sighting deaf students consistently earned higher speech grades than their right-handed-left sighting and right-handed-mixed-sighting counterparts matched on the basis of hearing loss. This finding supports the hypothesis that the cerebral mechanisms relevant to speech acquisition are simplified, facilitated, and/or less prone to interference when control of speech, hand, and eye is localized primarily in 1 hemisphere of the brain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preference for infant-directed singing in 2-day-old hearing infants of deaf parents.

L. J. Trainor (1996) reported preferences for infant-directed versus infant-absent singing in English in 4–7-month-old hearing infants of English-speaking hearing parents. In this experiment, the author tested preferences for infant-directed singing versus adult-directed singing in 15 two-day-old hearing infants of deaf parents for a Japanese and an English play song. Using a modified visual-fixation-based auditory-preference procedure, the author found that infants looked longer at a visual stimulus when looking produced infant-directed singing as opposed to adult-directed singing. These results suggest that infants prefer infant-directed singing over adult-directed singing and that the preference is present from birth and is not dependent on any specific prenatal or postnatal experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessment and training of role-taking and referential communication skills in institutionalized emotionally disturbed children.

Evaluated 125 institutionalized emotionally disturbed 8-15-yr-old children in terms of their role-taking and referential communication skills. On the basis of this screening process, the 48 Ss who performed most poorly on these measures were assigned randomly to 1 of 2 experimental training programs intended to remediate deficits in either role-taking or referential communication skills. As a group these institutionalized Ss were significantly delayed in the acquisition of both role taking and referential communication when compared with samples of their normal age-mates. Pre- and postintervention comparisons indicated that Ss of both experimental groups improved significantly in their role-taking ability. Ss of the communication training program also demonstrated significant improvement in referential communication skills. A 12-mo follow-up showed a trend for improvements in both test measures to be associated with improvements in social adjustment as rated by institutional staff. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)