College teachers' perceptions of English language characteristics that identify English language learning disabled deaf students.

Deaf individuals typically experience English language difficulties at all levels of linguistic knowledge. Hearing individuals with English language learning disabilities (LD) can exhibit the same kinds of English language difficulties as deaf individuals. Although the existence of deaf individuals who also have LD has long been recognized, no definite criteria for identifying them exist, partly because of the confounding effects of deafness and LD on English language development. Despite the confound, previous surveys suggest that teachers believe atypical English-language behavior is a potential diagnostic marker for LD in deaf individuals. In the present study, a survey solicited the intuitions of experienced teachers and tutors of English to deaf college students regarding the degree of difficulty deaf students with and without LD might be expected to have in dealing with 30 specific English language phenomena. Spelling knowledge and a variety of English discourse, lexical syntactic, and morphological phenomena emerged as candidates for further study as potential markers of LD in the deaf population.

Cognitive diversity in deaf people: implications for communication and education.

Research and issues related to cognitive diversity in deaf people will be reviewed that indicate how the visual-perceptual skills and cognitive processes of deaf people may be different from those in hearing people. It is suggested that deafness and the use of a sign language may selectively contribute to the development of such differences. Implications of the research and its limitations for enhancing the communication and educational experiences of deaf people are also discussed.

Deaf adults' attitudes toward career choices for deaf and hearing people in India.

This study investigated the expressed attitudes of deaf people in India toward career choices for deaf and hearing people. Deaf adults from Pune, India rated the suitability of 12 professions for deaf and hearing people and gave written comments on the suitability of any other professions they could list. The results, in general, were consistent with those of other studies in the United States, England, Italy, South Africa, and India with hearing teachers and parents of deaf children, which indicated that the hearing status of imagined deaf and hearing advisees selectively influenced attitudes toward the suitability of certain professions. Some differences in profession preferences also emerged indicating that the deaf respondents' criteria for career choice appeared to be primarily based on the use of hearing, speech, and visual skills required for a particular career. There was some suggestion that culturally specific factors played a role in shaping attitudes. These findings underscore the importance of understanding the attitudes of deaf people.

Attitudes of teachers and parents in India toward career choices for deaf and hearing people.

The attitudes of teachers and parents of deaf children in India toward career choices for deaf and hearing people were investigated with respondents rating the suitability of eight professions for an imagined group of equally qualified deaf and hearing advisees. The attitudes of parents and teachers in India were found to be similar to those reported in previous studies conducted in the United States, Italy, England, and South Africa and showed that the hearing status of the imagined advisees selectively influenced the respondents' ratings of their suitability for those professions. These results suggested that differences in the availability of educational or technological support for deaf people do not necessarily lead to differences in attitudes regarding career choices for deaf people.

Does deafness lead to enhancement of visual spatial cognition in children? Negative evidence from deaf nonsigners.

This study investigated whether deafness contributes to enhancement of visual spatial cognition independent of knowledge of a sign language. Congenitally deaf school children in India who were born to hearing parents and were not exposed to any sign language, and matched hearing controls, were given a test of digit span and five tests that measured visual spatial skills. The deaf group showed shorter digit span than the hearing group, consistent with previous studies. Deaf and hearing children did not differ in their performance on the visual spatial skills test, suggesting that deafness per se may not be a sufficient factor for enhancement of visual spatial cognition. Early exposure to a sign language and fluent sign skills may be the critical factors that lead to differential development of visual spatial skills in deaf people.

Allocation of attention, reading skills, and deafness.

Brannan and Williams (1987) found that poor readers cannot successfully utilize parafoveal cues to identify letter targets. Whether a similar deficit in the use of cue information occurs in deaf poor readers and whether it is only specific to processes that capture attention automatically were investigated in congenitally deaf young adults classified as poor or good readers and hearing controls classified as good readers. Subjects were presented with central or parafoveal cues that varied in cue validity probability, followed by letter targets presented to the left or right of fixation. The reaction time data analyses showed significant main effects for cue type and cue location and significant interactions among cue type, cue location, cue validity probability, and visual field. No significant main effect or interactions involving groups were found. These results raise the possibility that reading difficulties associated with deafness do no involve a deficit in the visual attentional system of deaf people. They also confirm that parafoveal cues are more effective than central cues in capturing attention.

Parafoveal attention in congenitally deaf and hearing young adults.

This reaction-time study compared the performance of 20 congenitally and profoundly deaf, and 20 hearing college students on a parafoveal stimulus detection task in which centrally presented prior cues varied in their informativeness about stimulus location. In one condition, subjects detected a parafoveally presented circle with no other information being present in the visual field. In another condition, spatially complex and task-irrelevant foveal information was present which the subjects were instructed to ignore. The results showed that although both deaf and hearing people utilized cues to direct attention to specific locations and had difficulty in ignoring foveal information, deaf people were more proficient in redirecting attention from one spatial location to another in the presence of irrelevant foveal information. These results suggest that differences exist in the development of attentional mechanisms in deaf and hearing people. Both groups showed an overall right visual-field advantage in stimulus detection which was attenuated when the irrelevant foveal information was present. These results suggest a left-hemisphere superiority for detection of parafoveally presented stimuli independent of cue informativeness for both groups.

Effects of parental deafness and early exposure to manual communication on the cognitive skills, English language skill, and field independence of young deaf adults.

Congenitally deaf college students with deaf parents who were native ASL signers (the ASL group) were compared to congenitally deaf college students who learned to sign between the ages of 6 and 12 years and who had hearing parents (the Delayed sign language group) on tests of cognitive skills, the cognitive style of field independence/dependence, and English language presented and produced through spoken, written, and sign modes. A control group of hearing college students was also included in the study. Differential effects of parental deafness and early exposure to manual communication, generally reported for deaf children, were not observed in the cognitive and communication performance of the experimental subjects. Furthermore, the Delayed sign language group performed significantly better than the ASL group on tests of speech perception and speech intelligibility. No differences on tests on cognitive skills were observed between the deaf and hearing subjects or between males and females. However, deaf females in both groups were more field dependent than deaf males and hearing females, while deaf males did not differ from hearing males. A test of speech reception skill was the only predictor of field independence for the ASL group while a test of cognitive skills was the only predictor of field independence for the other two groups.

Relationships among spatial skills, communication skills, and field independence in deaf students.

The hypotheses that deaf students would be more field-dependent than hearing students and that their competence in communication skills would be positively related to field-independence were supported for a group of 77 male and 67 female deaf students. Step-wise multiple regression analyses of the data showed that for females spatial skills followed by communication skills were significant predictors of field-independence; for males spatial skills followed by the extent of hearing loss were significant predictors of field-independence. Sex differences found on tests of field-independence and spatial relations were consistent with those obtained from the hearing population. It was suggested that socialization experiences and competence in communication skills may influence development of field-independence in deaf students.