| Abstract: | Furth, in a recent review (see: 39: 3964), concludes that studies of the deaf indicate that intellectual development proceeds independently of the acquisition of language. In this paper several issues were seen as limiting the premature acceptance of this conclusion. Among these were: (a) the deaf, through special training from 3 yr of age, often possess a verbal system; (b) the conclusion in the review can never be disproven, since any deficient performance by the deaf can almost always be attributed to numerous environmental factors rather than a language handicap; and (c) many tasks were arbitrarily assumed to require symbolic activity without recognizing that this assumption is still open to investigation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
