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Research shows that deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students frequently enter college and the workplace relatively unprepared for success in math, science, and reading. Based on data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS2), the present study focused on DHH students' college and career readiness by investigating their opportunities in secondary school to acquire college and career skills. DHH students earned more credits overall than hearing peers; both groups earned a similar number of credits in academic courses. However, DHH students took more vocational and nonacademic courses and fewer courses in science, social science, and foreign languages. There was evidence that DHH students' academic courses in math lacked the rigor of those taken by hearing peers, as DHH students earned more credits in basic math and fewer credits in midlevel math courses, and even fewer in advanced math courses, than hearing peers.

Deaf children generally are found to have smaller English vocabularies than hearing peers, although studies involving children with cochlear implants have suggested that the gap may decrease or disappear with age. Less is known about the vocabularies of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) postsecondary students or how their vocabulary knowledge relates to other aspects of academic achievement. This study used the "Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test" to examine the vocabulary knowledge of DHH and hearing postsecondary students as well as their awareness (predictions) of that knowledge. Relationships between vocabulary knowledge and print exposure, communication backgrounds, and reading and verbal abilities also were examined. Consistent with studies of children, hearing college students demonstrated significantly larger vocabularies than DHH students both with and without cochlear implants. DHH students were more likely to overestimate their vocabulary knowledge. Vocabulary scores were positively related to reading and verbal abilities but negatively related to sign language abilities. Among DHH students they also were positively related to measures of spoken language ability. Results are discussed in terms of related cognitive abilities, language fluency, and academic achievement of DHH students and implications for postsecondary education.

Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) learners are known to have vocabulary knowledge and language outcomes more heterogeneous than their hearing peers, with a greater incidence of difficulties presumably related (both as cause and effect) to documented challenges in academic domains. In particular, there is increasing evidence that differences may exist in the ways that semantic networks are structured and accessed in DHH and hearing learners. Individuals' judgments of word typicality offers a window into their semantic networks, revealing internal relationships in the mental lexicon. In the present study, 90 DHH and hearing college-aged learners provided typicality ratings at two points in time for 120 words common words considered to be central, borderline, or non-members of six categories. DHH and hearing participants differed in terms of their word knowledge, rating consistency, and rating magnitudes. Relative to hearing peers, DHH participants reported not knowing more of the words, but rated all words as being more typical than did hearing participants and rated the typicality of items more consistently over time. Implications of these findings for understanding mental lexicon structure for DHH and hearing learners, interpreting previous research, and constructing stimuli for future research are discussed.

Theory of Mind--the understanding that people have thoughts, wants, and beliefs that influence their interpersonal behavior--is an aspect of social cognition that develops with consistent, increasing complexity across age groups, languages, and cultures. Observed delays in theory of mind development among deaf children and others has led to a conversational account of theory of mind development and its delays in terms of the nature and amount of social communication experienced by children directly (conversationally) and indirectly (via overhearing). The present study explored theory of mind in deaf young adults by evaluating their understanding of sarcasm and advanced false belief (second-order false belief and double bluff), as well as related cognitive abilities. Consistent with previous studies, deaf participants scored significantly below hearing peers on all three theory of mind tasks. Performance was unrelated to their having had early access to social communication via either sign language (from deaf parents) or spoken language (through cochlear implants), suggesting that deaf participants' performance was not solely a function of access to social communication in early childhood. The finding of different predictors of theory of mind performance for deaf and hearing groups is discussed in terms of its language, social, and cognitive foundations.

The "unskilled and unaware effect" refers to the finding that individuals who are less knowledgeable or less skilled in a domain are relatively less able to evaluate their level of skill or effectively utilise feedback relative to individuals who are more skilled. Studies finding deaf students less accurate than hearing students in estimating their English vocabulary knowledge and in judging how much they are learning from material presented via sign language have attributed those results to the unskilled and unaware effect, citing the lack of language fluencies frequently demonstrated among deaf learners. The present study addressed the issue more directly by comparing both deaf and hearing individuals who were more and less skilled in four domains, three linguistic and one nonlinguistic. Results indicated that even individuals who are unskilled in a nonlinguistic domain can evaluate their performance when they are aware of what skilled performance would look like, and that unskilled and unaware effects can be influenced by individuals' desires to be skilled.

A variety of studies have examined ways in which cognitive and social-emotional factors may be linked to and affected by hearing loss, use of cochlear implants (CIs), and sign language. A related domain that largely has been overlooked, however, is personality. This paper reports a study of personality traits and self-efficacy among deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH; n = 223) college students, with and without CIs, as compared to hearing peers (n = 106). All participants completed (HEXACO) personality trait and self-efficacy inventories; DHH participants also completed a communication questionnaire. Hearing participants scored higher on the personality trait Conscientiousness than both DHH CI users and non-CI users, as well as higher on Openness to Experience compared to DHH CI users. Hearing participants also scored higher on self-efficacy compared to DHH non-CI users. Among DHH non-CI users, greater self-rated sign language skills were associated with higher Extraversion and Agreeableness scores. Among the DHH CI users, earlier sign language acquisition was associated with higher Openness to Experience scores, and earlier cochlear implantation was associated with greater Emotionality scores. Self-efficacy was associated with both better self-rated spoken language skills and a stronger preference for spoken language over sign language use among DHH CI users.

Various studies have examined possible loci of deaf learners' documented challenges with regard to reading, usually focusing on language-related factors. Deaf students also frequently struggle in mathematics and science, but fewer studies have examined possible reasons for those difficulties. The present study examined numerical and non-numerical (real-world) estimation skills among deaf and hearing college students, together with several cognitive abilities likely to underlie mathematics performance. Drawing on claims in the literature and some limited evidence from research involving deaf children, the study also considered the possibility that the use of sign language and/or the use of cochlear implants and spoken language might facilitate deaf college students' estimation skills and mathematics achievement more broadly. Results indicated relatively little impact of cochlear implant use or language modality on either estimation skills or overall mathematics ability. Predictors of those abilities differed for deaf and hearing learners. Results suggest the need to guard against overgeneralizations either within the diverse population of deaf learners or between deaf and hearing learners. They further emphasize the need for evidence-based practice in mathematics instruction appropriate for older deaf learners, rather than making assumptions from studies involving younger or narrowly-selected samples.

This study explored possible associations of social maturity, executive function (EF), self-efficacy, and communication variables among deaf university students, both cochlear implant (CI) users and nonusers. Previous studies have demonstrated differences between deaf and hearing children and young adults in EF and EF-related social and cognitive functioning. EF differences also have been demonstrated between hearing children and deaf children who use CIs. Long-term influences of cochlear implantation in the social domain largely have not been explored, but were examined in the present study in terms of social maturity, as it might be related to EF and communication variables. Replicating and extending recent findings, social maturity was found to be related to somewhat different aspects of EF in CI users, deaf nonusers, and hearing students, but unrelated to hearing status, CI use, or deaf students' use of sign language versus spoken language. Self-efficacy proved a predictor of self-reported socially mature and immature behaviours for all groups. Individuals' beliefs about their parents' views of such behaviours was a potent predictor of behaviours for deaf CI users and those deaf students who reported sign language as their best form of communication.

Various studies have examined psychosocial functioning and language abilities among deaf children with and without cochlear implants (CIs). Few, however, have explored how relations among those abilities might change with age and setting. Most relevant studies also have failed to consider that psychosocial functioning among both CI users and nonusers might be influenced by having language abilities in both signed and spoken language. The present investigation explored how these variables might influence each other, including the possibility that deaf individuals' psychosocial functioning might be influenced differentially by perceived and actual signed and spoken language abilities. Changes in acculturation and quality of life were examined over their first year in college, together with changes in perceived and assessed language abilities. Students with and without CIs differed significantly in some aspects of psychosocial functioning and language ability, but not entirely in the directions expected based on studies involving school-aged deaf students. Participants' cultural affiliations were related as much or more to perceived language abilities as to the reality of those abilities as indicated by formal assessments. These results emphasize the need to consider the heterogeneity of deaf learners if they are to receive the support services needed for personal and academic growth.

Deaf learners are a highly heterogeneous group who demonstrate varied levels of academic achievement and attainment. Most prior research involving this population has focused on factors facilitating academic success in young deaf children, with less attention paid to older learners. Recent studies, however, have suggested that while factors such as early cochlear implantation and early sign language fluency are positively associated with academic achievement in younger deaf children, they no longer predict achievement once children reach high school age. This study, involving data from 980 college-bound high school students with hearing loss, examined relations between academic achievement, communication variables (audiological, language), and use of assistive technologies (e.g., cochlear implants [CIs], FM systems) and other support services (e.g., interpreting, real-time text) in the classroom. Spoken language skills were positively related to achievement in some domains, while better sign language skills were related to poorer achievement in others. Among these college-bound students, use of CIs and academic support services in high school accounted for little variability in their college entrance examination scores.