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Research suggests that the academic achievement of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students is the result of a complex interplay of many factors. These factors include characteristics of the students (e.g., hearing thresholds, language fluencies, mode of communication, and communication functioning), characteristics of their family environments (e.g., parent education level, socioeconomic status), and experiences inside and outside school (e.g., school placement, having been retained at grade level). This paper examines the relative importance of such characteristics to U.S. DHH secondary students’ academic achievement as indicated by the Woodcock-Johnson III subtests in passage comprehension, mathematics calculation, science, and social studies. Data were obtained for approximately 500 DHH secondary students who had attended regular secondary schools or state-sponsored special schools designed for DHH students. Across all subject areas, having attended regular secondary schools and having better spoken language were associated with higher test scores. Significant negative predictors of achievement varied by type of subtest but included having an additional diagnosis of a learning disability, having a mild hearing loss, and being African American or Hispanic. The findings have important implications for policy and practice in educating DHH students as well for interpreting previous research.

Sign language interpreting is an occupation that suffers from high levels of repetitive motion injuries (RMIs) and burnout due to the high physical and cognitive demands of the interpreting task. The objective of this research was to determine the effects of work pace and psychosocial stress on the wrist kinematics of sign language interpreting. It was found that neither pace nor stress affected mean wrist position, but increased pace resulted in a significant increase of both mean velocity and acceleration, with increases ranging from 10.7–18.6%. Increased psychosocial stress resulted in a significant increase of left-hand (non-dominant) mean velocity and acceleration, with increases ranging from 14.8–19.5%. No effect of stress was observed for the right hand. In addition, several wrist kinematic variables of interpreting exceeded previously established high risk industrial benchmarks. The results of this work support earlier research which found deleterious effects of work stress on the biomechanical responses of the lower back.

Intelligence has long been seen as linked to the spoken and written word. Because most deaf people have poor spoken language skills and find reading a significant challenge, there is a history in both psychology and education of considering deaf individuals to be less intelligent or less cognitively flexible than hearing individuals. With progress in understanding natural signed languages and cognitive abilities of individuals who lack spoken language, this perspective has changed. We now recognise, for example, that deaf people have some advantages in visuospatial ability relative to hearing people, and there is a link between the use of natural signed languages and enhanced visuospatial abilities in several domains. Such findings contrast with results found in memory, where the modality of mental representation, experience, and organisation of knowledge lead to differences in performance between deaf and hearing individuals, usually in favour of the latter. Such findings demonstrate that hearing loss and use of a natural sign language can influence intellectual abilities, including many tapped by standardised IQ tests. These findings raise interesting questions about the place of spoken language in our understanding of intelligence and ways in which we can use basic research for applied purposes.

Two experiments examined the problem‐solving strategies of deaf and hearing students from seven years to college age in the context of the ‘Twenty Questions’ game. Overall, deaf children were significantly less likely than hearing peers to ‘win’ the game within Twenty Questions, and problem‐solving appeared less efficient and less cognitively sophisticated among deaf than hearing students at all ages. Deaf and hearing children who had played the game before were equally likely to use winning strategies. However, inexperienced hearing children typically discovered the ‘correct’ strategy, whereas inexperienced deaf peers did not. Reflectivity–impulsivity, as measured by the Porteus Mazes Test (Experiment 1), was unrelated to problem‐solving performance in children and revealed no effects of hearing status. Possible causes and implications of the observed effects are discussed as they relate to early experiences of deaf children and their lack of early, effective access to language. Copyright © 1999 Whurr Publishers Ltd.

The language flexibilty and creativity of deaf children was investigated by having four deaf and four hearing 12–15-year-olds generate stories to experimenter-supplied themes. These were videotaped and examined for instances of nonliteral communication. Contrary to previous claims that deaf children are extremely rigid and literal in their language use, subjects here showed considerable use of creative language devices when evaluated in sign rather than vocal language. Deaf students produced traditional types of figurative contructions at a rate equal to their hearing age-mates and surpassed them in four other categories of nonliteral expression. These findings are discussed in terms of the cognitive skills required for and reflected by figurative language use and common assumptions concerning deaf children's related abilities.

A sample of 204 poetic metaphors was rated along 10 scales by 300 participants (30 different people for each of the scales). The scales were identical to ones previously used in a study involving ratings of artificially constructed metaphors, and were chosen on the basis of their relevance to current models of metaphor processing. Three major findings emerged. First, the overall pattern of findings was identical to the one obtained earlier using constructed metaphors, and aspects of it provided support for each major metaphor model without completely onfirming any one of them. Models that attribute an important role to perceptual like processes provided the most successful fit to the data. Second, all of the 10 scales were positively intercorrelated, although the correlations were generally moderate enough to permit independent experimental manipulations of the variables defined by the different scales. These results, too, are similar to those obtained earlier with constructed metaphors. Third, we identify and discuss some suggestive differences between the results of the two studies.

Two rating studies examined several dimensions of metaphorical sentences. A pool of 260 metaphors was constructed, all in the form “(noun phrase) is/are (noun phrase).” In Study 1 all of the items, and in Study 2, 98 of the items were evaluated on ten scales presumed to be important to the comprehension or interpretation of metaphors: semantic relatedness of the subject and predicate, comprehensibility, imageability, imageability of the subject (topic), imageability of the predicate (vehicle), degree of metaphoricity, metaphor goodness, ease of interpretation, number of alternative interpretations, and felt familiarity of the metaphoric ground. Both experiments revealed the rated dimensions to be highly interrelated, but some analyses allowed evaluation of alternative predictions based on current theoretical approaches to metaphor quality and interpretation. The results indicated consistent but mixed support for the general poisitions under consideration as each appeared to have strong and weak areas of applicability. The interrelationships among the scales are discussed, together with implications of the findings for current theories and future metaphor research.

Three experiments explored concreteness effects in memory for words following imagery-related orienting tasks. Predictions from dual coding and relational-distinctive explanations of concreteness and imagery effects were contrasted. Of particular interest were differences in the magnitudes of concreteness effects in an item-specific imagery task (timed image generation) and a relational imagery task (rating of relative imageability). The effects of restricted-range (high and medium-imagery) versus full-range (high, medium and low-imagery) materials were also considered as a means to evaluate the effects of relative item distinctiveness on concreteness effects. The results demonstrated the importance of relational information in the production of concreteness effects and indicated that imagery alone is an insufficient explanation of concreteness effects. At the same time, they revealed the need for a more comprehensive theoretical account of the role of mental imagery in memory, as neither model under consideration could account for all of the present findings.

Evidence over the last 15 years has suggested that dual (imagery and verbal) coding explanations of concreteness effects in memory for word lists do not generalise well to memory for sentences and paragraphs. In contrast, an alternative framework based on relative differences in relational and distinctive processing has been shown to account for the effects of imagery and concreteness in these contexts and others. This paper describes recent research on free and cued recall of word lists and evaluates it with respect to the two models. The evidence suggests that whereas dual processing systems may be involved in the encoding of verbal materials, dual memory codes are insufficient to explain concreteness effects in recall. Better memory for high-as compared to low-imagery words depends on the use of paradigms that facilitate inter-item relational processing, independent of whether or not imagery is involved.

Abstract:Three experiments employed the Stroop task to investigate the automaticity of recognizing signs and printed words by prelingually deaf subjects Experiments 1 and 2 involved words for color and signs for color Experiment 3 Involved numerals, printed words for number, and signs for number. In all cases, Incongruent but irrelevant signed and printed stimuli led to Interference in reporting the color or number of stimulus elements, and thus indicated automatic semantic access to the meanings of words and of signs by subjects as early as age eleven. Surprisingly, however, printed words consistently created significantly more interference than did signs. Possible explanations and Implications of these findings are discussed.

Four experiments explored on-line encoding strategies and memory for high imagery and low imagery texts. Results consistently indicated that concreteness effects in memory for text depend on how materials are presented in several different respects. Most importantly, the experiments clarified apparently contradictory results of previous studies by indicating that concreteness effects generally do not occur in memory for prose when imageability is manipulated between-subjects, and that their occurrence when imageability is manipulated within-subjects depends on the order of presentation. In addition, moving window analyses of text processing strategies indicated that differential strategies observed in previous studies when subjects listened to high vs low imagery text do not generalise to reading of the same materials. Potential explanations for the pattern of results are evaluated, and implications for theories of mental imagery and memory are considered.

Norms on 464 metaphors are presented for 10 dimensions representing ratings of comprehensibility, some perceived metaphoric qualities, imagery values, familiarity, and tenor-vehicle relatedness. The items were either literary metaphors selected from works of poetry (N = 204) or nonliterary metaphors generated by the experimenters (N = 260). Analyses of the normative data indicated that (a) the mean ratings of the metaphors were reliable (average Cronbach alpha = 0.88); (b) even so, individuals varied in their reactions to the metaphors; (c) the 10 dimensions correlated substantially with one another; and (d) literary and nonliterary metaphors showed similar patterns for the descriptive and relational statistics examined. These data demonstrate the need for metaphor researchers to consider multiple attributes if they are to achieve less confounded or factorial variation of theoretically motivated variables. The normative data provided here exhibit sufficient variation among items and independence among scales for use in such studies.

A system is presented for identifying and evaluating the creative language use of deaf and hearing individuals. These classifications were developed for use in studies of deaf children's linguistic creativity but they have also accounted for 100% of the nonliteral constructions used by deaf adults, hearing children, and hearing adults (including native signers). The seven scoring categories are (a) traditional forms of novel figurative language; (b) frozen figurative language; (c) gesture-supplementary and frozen; (d) pantomime; (e) novel linguistic modification; (f) linguistic inventions- lexical, conceptual, and proper; and (g) lexical substitutions. The implications of observing such constructions are discussed, together with relevant research findings.

Abstract:In previous studies, evidence concerning the extent of automatic word recognition in deaf children and the influence of language fluency on word and sign recognition (as indexed by the Stroop task) has been contradictory. This study examined the effects of English and sign language fluency in the automatic word and sign recognition of deaf and hearing adults. Results indicated that responding in sign took longer and created more Stroop interference than responding orally. Two groups of certified interpreters revealed this finding to be independent of hearing status. Most important, deaf subjects showed greater automaticity in recognizing signs than words, whereas hearing subjects showed greater automaticity in recognizing words than signs. This pattern was unaffected by language fluency. The findings clarify the results of previous studies both theoretically and methodologically.

Abstract:In two experiments, we examined deaf and hard of hearing adolescents' memory for prose as compared to that of hearing students. The study focused on the possibility that deaf and hard of hearing readers might make relatively less use of relational information in textual materials. Text structure and material concreteness were manipulated, and memory for relational and distinctive information was assessed. Results indicated that deaf and hard of hearing students remembered the abstract materials as well as they did the concrete materials. They were less likely than hearing students to remember idea units (concrete or abstract) holistically within passages, but they showed relatively better memory for individual words. This difference disappeared when the same sentences were presented without global paragraph coherence. The findings suggest that deaf and hard of hearing readers may be less likely than hearing readers to integrate text information across idea units, although they may retain as much information from within units.

The magic paradigm was used to examine preschoolers’ abilities to make judgments requiring a number-related invariance concept. Findings from previous, similar studies have suggested number invariance schemes in 3- and 4-year-olds. The stimuli in those investigations, however, contained a redundancy of number and relative numerosity. When these dimensions were separated in the present study, fewer children exhibited conservation-like performance than in the redundant-cue task and, contrary to previous findings, most did not justify their responses with reference to number. The results were consistent with the suggestion that preschoolers do make use of invariance concepts in the magic paradigm, but that these need not always represent number invariance per se.

Two experiments examined largerand smallerjudgments of animal and object word pairs. In the pilot experiment, we used the standard tachistoscopic paradigm; in the second experiment, we employed a modified pencil-and-paper version. Congruity effects (i.e., comparative × relative magnitude interactions) were consistently larger with animal than with object stimuli across subjects ranging from second graders to university students. These results support a semantic priming interpretation of the congruity effect and emphasize the need to consider the retrieval component as well as the comparison stage in symbolic judgments.