Effects of pace and stress on upper extremity kinematic responses in sign language interpreters.

Sign language interpreters suffer from high levels of upper extremity disorders and burnout due to the physical and cognitive demands of interpreting. The objective of this research was to quantify the wrist kinematics of interpreting and to assess how speaker pace and psychosocial stress influence wrist kinematics. Professional interpreters interpreted a pre-recorded lecture, while the speaking pace of the lecture varied. One group of subjects was exposed to environmental conditions intended to induce stress. Several wrist kinematic variables of interpreting exceeded previously established high risk benchmarks for development of upper extremity disorders in industrial tasks. Wrist velocity and acceleration increased significantly with pace, with increases ranging from 10.7-18.6%. Increased psychosocial stress resulted in significant increase of left hand (non-dominant) wrist velocity and acceleration, with increases ranging from 14.8-19.5%. These results provide an objective assessment of the biomechanical demands of interpreting and support earlier research into different types of work, which found deleterious effects of psychosocial stress on the biomechanical responses of the lower back.

Understanding theory of mind in children who are deaf.

Research on theory of mind began in the context of determining whether chimpanzees are aware that individuals experience cognitive and emotional states. More recently, this research has involved various groups of children and various tasks, including the false belief task. Based almost exclusively on that paradigm, investigators have concluded that although "normal" hearing children develop theory of mind by age 5, children who are autistic or deaf do not do so until much later, perhaps not until their teenage years. The present study explored theory of mind by examining stories told by children who are deaf and hearing (age 9-15 years) for statements ascribing behaviour-relevant states of mind to themselves and others. Both groups produced such attributions, although there were reliable differences between them. Results are discussed in terms of the cognitive abilities assumed to underlie false belief and narrative paradigms and the implications of attributing theory of mind solely on the basis of performance on the false belief task.

Intellectual and emotional functioning in college students following mild traumatic brain injury in childhood and adolescence.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether college students with a history of mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) in childhood or adolescence show residual deficits in intellectual functioning, approaches to studying, or emotional stability. DESIGN: Participants with a history of mild TBI and two control groups. SETTING: Volunteers were recruited from students taking an introductory psychology course. PARTICIPANTS: 79 students with a history of mild TBI, 75 students with a history of general anesthesia, and 93 students with no history of either TBI or general anesthesia. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Participants carried out tests of verbal memory, nonverbal memory, verbal fluency, and nonverbal fluency; in addition, they completed a short form of the Approaches to Studying Inventory and the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R). RESULTS: In comparison with the two control groups, the students with a history of mild TBI produced similar scores on the cognitive tests and similar orientations to studying. However, they showed a significantly higher level of emotional distress on the SCL-90-R. CONCLUSION: College students with a history of mild TBI in childhood or adolescence are intellectually unimpaired and approach their studying in a similar manner to their uninjured classmates. Nevertheless, they report more severe distress in terms of their general personal and emotional functioning.

Interactions of language and memory in deaf children and adults.

This article reviews theoretical and empirical issues concerning the relations of language and memory in deaf children and adults. An integration of previous studies, together with the presentation of new findings, suggests that there is an intimate relation between spoken language and memory. Either spoken language or sign language can serve as a natural mode of communication for young children (deaf or hearing), leading to normal language, social, and cognitive development. Nevertheless, variation in spoken language abilities can be shown to have a direct impact on memory span. Although the ways in which memory span can effect other cognitive processes and academic achievement are not considered in depth here, several variables that can have direct impact on the language-memory interaction are considered. These findings have clear implications for the education of deaf children.

Consensus on early identification of hearing loss?

The National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Conference on Early Identification of Hearing Impairment was convened to address the advantages of early identification of hearing impairment and the consequences of late identification of hearing impairment, the issue of which children should be screened for hearing impairment and when, the advantages and disadvantages of current screening methods, the question of which model for hearing screening and follow-up is preferred, and future directions for research in diagnosis and management of hearing impairment in infants and young children. Among their findings, the panel concluded that (1) all infants admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit be screened for hearing loss prior to discharge, (2) universal screening be implemented for all infants within the first 3 months of life, (3) the preferred model for screening should begin with an evoked otoacoustic emissions test and should he followed by an auditory brainstem response test for all infants who fail the evoked otoacoustic emissions test, (4) comprehensive intervention and management programs must be an integral part of a universal screening program, (5) universal neonatal screening should not be a replacement for ongoing surveillance throughout infancy and early childhood, and (6) education of primary caregivers and primary health care providers on the early signs of hearing impairment is essential.

Memory for language in deaf adults and children.

Cognitive psychologists have known for a long time that language and memory are intimately related in people who can hear. Why should the situation be any different for deaf children and deaf adults? This article considers the results of previous studies and some new findings in examining the possible impact of spoken language and sign language fluencies/preferences on the structure and process of memory in deaf individuals. Current evidence suggests that there are some differences in the organization of long-term memory in deaf as compared to hearing people, but no one has yet demonstrated such differences to be so large that they qualitatively or quantitatively affect learning in any real sense. In contrast, there is now abundant evidence to suggest that variation in spoken language abilities have a direct impact on memory span and perhaps on working memory more generally. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the education of students who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Communication between parents and deaf children: implications for social-emotional development.

Parent-child communication plays a central role in social growth, as it does in other domains of development. Over 90% of deaf children, however, have hearing parents who frequently do not have a fully effective means of communicating with them. This paper examines the role of effective parent-child communication in the social and emotional development of deaf children. Evidence concerning relations between early communication and social-emotional development of deaf children is reviewed, and superficial differences in the ways that parents interact with deaf versus hearing children are distinguished from differences that may have more significant and enduring effects. Hearing parents and their deaf children are found to develop alternative, often nonverbal, interaction strategies. Of primary interest is the extent to which those strategies have impact comparable to the strategies of hearing parents with hearing children or deaf parents with deaf children.

Why are there sometimes concreteness effects in memory for prose?

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 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 generalize 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.

Discourse rules in the language productions of deaf and hearing children.

A variety of studies has documented lags in deaf children's development of literacy-related skills relative to hearing age-mates. Among the reported differences is the finding that deaf children typically do not appear to make use of discourse rules in structuring their writing. In the present study, we compared signed and written productions by deaf 7- to 15-year-olds to oral and written productions of hearing age-mates. Two studies demonstrated that signed and oral productions had similar discourse structures as indicated by the patterns of causal goal-action-outcome episodes (Trabasso, van den Broek, & Suh, 1989). Written productions in Experiment 2 also revealed comparable discourse organization for the two samples, but the grammatical and lexical character of deaf children's writing lagged behind that of the hearing children. The results indicate that deaf children make use of discourse rules in narrative production, but that these may be obscured by disfluencies in writing.

Hearing status and language fluency as predictors of automatic word and sign recognition.

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.

Deaf and hard of hearing adolescents' memory for concrete and abstract prose. Effects of relational and distinctive information.

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.

Concreteness effects in free recall: the roles of imaginal and relational processing.

Two experiments reevaluated the possible role of mental imagery in free recall of concrete and abstract words. In Experiment 1, the number and rate of list presentations were manipulated. Incidental recall following an imagery rating task yielded reliable concreteness effects after two presentations but not after a single presentation, regardless of presentation rate. In Experiment 2, we examined the effects of relational (categorization) and item-specific (imagery rating) processing tasks on memory for categorically related or unrelated concrete and abstract words. Concreteness effects were obtained when unrelated words were sorted into categories but not when they were rated on imagery. Related words failed to yield concreteness effects under any orienting condition. The results support the view that the presence or absence of concreteness effects in free recall depends on the relative salience of distinctive and relational information. This conclusion constrains theoretical explanations of the role of mental imagery in memory and cognition.

A reexamination of the role of imagery in learning and memory.

Five experiments were conducted to examine whether the superior recall of concrete over abstract words might be better accounted for in terms of relative differences in the processing of relational and distinctive information rather than redundant verbal and imaginal memory codes. Concrete and abstract word pairs were presented in the standard paired-associated learning task or under conditions intended to affect the nature and extent of relational processing between pair members. Concreteness effects were attenuated or eliminated when relational processing was prevented at encoding (Experiments 3, 4, and 5) or when the use of encoded relations within pairs was prevented at recall (Experiments 1, 2, and 3). The results indicated the viability of an account of concreteness effects in paired-associate learning based on the joint functions of distinctive and relational information. They also remove theoretical constraints imposed on imagery theories by the incorrect assumption of a uniform presence of concreteness effects in memory for word lists.

Linguistic flexibility in signed and written language productions of deaf children.

Linguistic flexibility of deaf and hearing children was compared by examining the relative frequencies of their nonliteral constructions in stories written and signed (by the deaf) or written and spoken (by the hearing). Seven types of nonliteral constructions were considered: novel figurative language, frozen figurative language, gestures, pantomime, linguistic modifications, linguistic inventions, and lexical substitutions. Among the hearing 8- to 15-year-olds, oral and written stories contained comparable numbers of nonliteral constructions. Among their age-matched deaf peers, however, nonliteral constructions were significantly stories contained comparable numbers of nonliteral constructions. Among their age-matched deaf peers, however, nonliteral constructions were significantly more common in signed than written stories. Overall, hearing students used more nonliteral constructions in their written stories than did their deaf peers (who used very few), whereas deaf students used more nonliteral constructions in their signed stories than their hearing peers did in their spoken stories. The results suggest that deaf children are linguistically and cognitively more competent than is generally assumed on the basis of evaluations in English. Although inferior to hearing age-mates in written expression, they are comparable to, and in some ways better than those peers when evaluated using their primary mode of communication.

Development of creative language devices in signed and oral production.

The development of linguistic and cognitive flexibility was examined by evaluating nonliteral language use by 20 deaf and 20 hearing children aged 7;11 to 15;0 years. Each subject was videotaped telling stories on two experimenter-supplied themes. Deaf subjects' stories were translated and transcripts for both samples were scored for gesture, pantomime, linguistic modifications, and inventions as well as novel and frozen trope. Results indicated deaf children produced just as much figurative language in sign language as their matched hearing age-mates did in English. Deaf subjects exceeded their hearing peers in other types of creative productions. They also evidenced a "literal period" in language development, comparable to hearing children but delayed approximately 4 years. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding both language and cognitive flexibilities of deaf children.

Creative language abilities of deaf children.

The language flexibility 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.

Metaphoric competence in cognitive and language development.

Consideration of the age-related changes in children's language and cognitive development suggests qualitative changes in their creative language use. Many, if not most, researchers in the area have argued that some metaphoric competence emerges far earlier than would be expected on the basis of explanation or interpretation tasks alone. These same researchers, however, appear largely to have neglected consideration of the cognitive prerequisites for such abilities and differences between what is nonliteral for the adult and nonliteral for the child. If figurative language is defined as involving intentional violation of conceptual boundaries in order to highlight some correspondence, one must be sure that children credited with that competence have (1) the metacognitive and metalinguistic abilities to understand at least some of the implications of such language (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Nelson, 1974; Nelson & Nelson, 1978), (2) a conceptual organization that entails the purportedly violated conceptual boundaries (Lange, 1978), and (3) some notion of metaphoric tension as well as ground. Having stacked the definitional cards, we doubt that many investigators would assert that 2-year-old children at nonverbal symbolic play are doing anything that is literally metaphorical in our terms. But neither will we deny that one can observe creative components in the verbal and nonverbal play of the young child that are precursors of later nonliteral language skills (see McCune-Nicolich, 1981, for discussion). We simply do not see these creative abilities as specific to language in any way that justifies calling them metaphoric competence. Rather, the child's abilities to deal flexibly with the world, to "play" with possible alternative organizations of it, and to see similarity in diversity represent the bases of subsequent cognitive as well as language development. Far from being an exceptional aspect of development, apparently nonliteral language should be considered a fundamental tool in the young child's construction of both internal and external worlds (McCune-Nicolich, 1981; Vygotsky, 1978). If one is willing to accept that children's conceptual organization might not match that of adults, then what is appropriately called nonliteral language in the young child must be reexamined. We find it strange that researchers acknowledge differences, for example, in children's notions of animacy, and yet assume that errors of animacy attribution are figurative constructions indicative of an ability to supercede a level of analysis the child does not have.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)