Vocabulary Use by Low, Moderate, and High ASL-Proficient Writers Compared to Hearing ESL and Monolingual Speakers.

The written English vocabulary of 72 deaf elementary school students of various proficiency levels in American Sign Language (ASL) was compared with the performance of 60 hearing English-as-a-second-language (ESL) speakers and 61 hearing monolingual speakers of English, all of similar age. Students were asked to retell "The Tortoise and the Hare" story (previously viewed on video) in a writing activity. Writing samples were later scored for total number of words, use of words known to be highly frequent in children's writing, redundancy in writing, and use of English function words. All deaf writers showed significantly lower use of function words as compared to their hearing peers. Low-ASL-proficient students demonstrated a highly formulaic writing style, drawing mostly on high-frequency words and repetitive use of a limited range of function words. The moderate- and high-ASL-proficient deaf students' writing was not formulaic and incorporated novel, low-frequency vocabulary to communicate their thoughts. The moderate- and high-ASL students' performance revealed a departure from findings one might expect based on previous studies with deaf writers and their vocabulary use. The writing of the deaf writers also differed from the writing of hearing ESL speakers. Implications for deaf education and literacy instruction are discussed, with special attention to the fact that ASL-proficient, deaf second-language learners of English may be approaching English vocabulary acquisition in ways that are different from hearing ESL learners.

Negative information: both presence and absence of spatial pattern elements guide rats' spatial choices.

Rats learn the spatial pattern in which hidden caches of food are located. Once the pattern is learned, finding one or more baited locations provides (positive) information about the remaining baited locations. In the present experiment, we examined whether negative information (the absence of food in a location) would also be used in locating the remaining baited locations. Rats were tested in an apparatus containing a matrix of vertical poles, on top of which food could be hidden. At the beginning of the trial, the location of the baited poles was unpredictable, but the poles were always arranged in a linear pattern. The rats learned the pattern and used both positive and negative information in locating baited poles.