Abstract
Two groups of students, one with prelingually acquired deafness, and a hearing control group participated in an experiment designed to examine the effect of communication mode on working memory coding and information-processing capacity. A research paradigm based on a letter-processing task was used as a test tool. Sixteen of the participants who were deaf (mean grade 6.9) were raised by hearing parents advocating a strict oral approach at home and at school. Another 16 students with deafness (mean grade 6.9), all of them children of deaf parents, acquired sign language as their primary language. The mean grade of the hearing control group was 6.5. Contrary to expectations, the groups' information-processing capacity was not biased by their preferred communication mode. Although the stimuli material was linguistic in nature, no evidence for linguistic coding was found.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
ANSI. (1989). American National Standard Specifications for Audiometers, American National Standards Institute, New York.
Baddeley, A. (1986). Working Memory, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Baddeley, A. (1990). Human Memory: Theory and Practice, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, Hillsdale, USA.
Baddeley, A., Lewis, V., and Vallar, G. (1984). Exploring the articulatory loop. Q. J. Experim. Psychol. 36: 233–252.
Baddeley, A., Thomson, N., and Buchanan, M. (1975). Word length and the structure of shortterm memory. J. Verb. Learn. Behav. 14: 575–589.
Bellugi, U., Klima, E., and Siple, P. (1975). Remembering in signs. Congnition 3: 93–125.
Bonvillian, J. D. (1983). Effects of signability and imagery on word recall of deaf and hearing students. Percept. Motor Skills 56: 775–791.
Bonvillian, J. D., Rea, C. A., Orlansky, M. D., and Slade, L. A. (1987). The effect of sign language rehearsal on deaf subjects' immediate and delayed recall of English word lists. Appl. Psycholing. 8: 33–54.
Clark, M. D. (1991). New methodologies to evaluate the memory strategies of deaf individuals. In Martin, D. S. (ed.), Advances in Cognition, Education and Deafness, Washington, DC, Gallaudet University Press, pp. 62–68.
Conrad, R. (1964). Acoustic confusions in immediate memory. Br. J. Psychol. 55: 75–84.
Conrad, R. (1979). The Deaf School Child, Harper & Row, London.
Corcoran, D. W., and Weening, D. L. (1968). Acoustic factors in visual speech. Q. J. Experim. Psychol. 20: 83–85.
Hamilton, H., and Holzman, T. G. (1989). Linguistic coding in short-term memory as a function of stimulus type. Mem. & Cogn. 17: 541–550.
Hanson, V. L. (1982). Short-term recall by deaf signers of American sign language: Implications of encoding strategy for order recall. J. Experim. Psychol. Learn. Mem., and Cogn. 8: 572–583.
Hanson, V. (1989). Phonology and Reading: Evidence from profoundly deaf readers. In Shankweiler, D., and Liberman, I. (eds.), Phonology and Reading Disability: Solving the Reading Puzzle, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI, pp. 69–89.
Hanson, V. L., and Lichtenstein, E. H. (1990). Short-term memory coding by deaf signers: The primary language coding hypothesis reconsidered. Cogn. Psychol. 22: 211–224.
Hartung, J. I. (1970). Visual perceptual skill, reading ability, and the young deaf child. Except. Child. 36: 603–608.
Hintzman, D. L. (1967). Articulatory coding in short-term memory. J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 6: 312–316.
Kelly, V. (1995). Processing of bottom-up and top-down information by skilled and average deaf readers and implication for whole language instruction. Except. Child. 61: 318–334.
King, C. M., and Quigley, S. P. (1985). Reading and Deafness, London, Taylor & Francis.
Klima, E., and Bellugi, U. (1979). The Signs of Language, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Kyle, J. (1989). Sign language a cognition for deaf people: Pitfalls and Prospects. Appl. Cogn. Psychol. 3: 109–125.
Krakow, R. A., and Hanson, V. L. (1985). Deaf signers and serial recall in the visual modality: Memory for signs, fingerspelling, and print. Mem. & Cogn. 13: 265–272.
Liberman, A. M. (1992). The relation of speech to reading and writing. In Frost, R., and Katz, L. (eds.), Orthography, Phonology, Morphology, and Meaning, North-Holland, Elsevier Science Publishers, B. V., pp. 167–178.
McCutchen, D., and Perfetti, C. A. (1982). The visual tongue-twister effect: Phonological activation in silent reading. J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 21: 672–687.
Miller, P. (1986). The Cognition of the Deaf Child. Unpublished Master Thesis, University of Haifa, Israel.
Odom, P. B., Blanton, R. L., and McIntre, C. K. (1970). Coding medium and word recall by deaf and hearing subjects. J. Speech Hear. Res. 13: 54–58.
Paul, P., and Quigley, S. (1994). Language and Deafness, 2nd Ed., Singular Publishing Group, San Diego, CA.
Posner, M. I., Boies, S. J., Eichelman, W. H., and Taylor, R. L. (1969). Retention of visual and name codes of single letters. J. Experim. Psychol. Monogr. 70: 1–16.
Posner, M. I., and Keele, S. W. (1967). Decay of visual information of a single letter. Science 158: 137–139.
Posner, M. I., and Mitchell, R. R. (1967). Chronometric analysis of classification. Psychol. Rev. 74: 392–409.
Rubenstein, H., Lewis, S. S., and Rubenstein, M. A. (1971). Evidence for phonemic recording in visual word recognition. J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 10: 645–657.
Shand, M. A. (1982). Sign based short-term coding of American Sign Language signs and printed English words by congenitally deaf signers. Cogn. Psychol. 14: 1–12.
Shimron, J. (1993). The role of vowels in reading: A review of studies of English and Hebrew. Psychol. Bull. 114: 52–67.
Shimron, J., and Navon, D. (1982). The dependence on graphemes and on their translation to phonemes in reading: A developmental perspective. Read. Res. Q. 17: 210–228.
Siedlecki, T., Votaw, M. C., Bonvillian, J. D., and Jordan, K. I. (1990). The effect of manual interference and reading level of deaf subjects' recall of word lists. Appl. Psycholing. 11: 185–199.
Treiman, R., and Hirsh-Pasek, K. (1983). Silent reading: Insight from second-generation deaf readers. Cogn. Psychol. 15: 39–65.
Van Orden, G. C. (1987). A ROWS is a ROSE: Spelling, sound and reading. Mem. & Cog. 15: 181–198.
Van Orden, G.C., Johnston, J. C., and Hale, B. L. (1988). Word identification in reading proceeds from spelling to sound to meaning. J. Experim. Psychol.: Learn., Mem., and Cogn. 14: 371–385.
Van Orden,G.C., Stone,G.O., Garlington, K. L., Markson, L. R., Pinnt,G. S., and Simonfy,C.M. (1992). “Assembled” phonology and reading: A case study in how theoretical perspective shapes empirical investigation. In Frost, R., and Katz, L. (eds.), Orthography, Phonology, Morphology, and Meaning, North-Holland, Elsevier Science Publishers, B.V., pp. 249–292.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Miller, P. Communication Mode and the Information Processing Capacity of Hebrew Readers with Prelingually Acquired Deafness. Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities 13, 83–96 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026561417325
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026561417325