Letters to the Editor

Comments, Questions, and Answers Alan B. Crammatte Editor, Comments The Comment, Question, and Answer department is published as a service to professional readers and parents of deaf children. It is an attempt to provide practical information on the basic aspects of deafness, particularly in relation to education. Although all questions submitted cannot be used, those considered to be of greatest interest to readers will be published. Answers are prepared by competent authorities. Material submitted must contain the writer's name and address. Address questions and comments to: Alan B. Crammatte, 897 Windsong Dr., Arnold, Md. 21012 QUESTION—Today in education of the deaf there are many choices available to parents. There are different kinds of schools and classes, and some use different methods. Some parents, without too much knowledge of deafness, have to decide what to do about the education of their child. And in some cases there are boards or committees which evaluate the child psychologically and then decide where and how he/ she should be educated. My question is: How do parents and others not trained in deafness and all its implications make the right decision? Is there any data available to help people make the proper choice? ]o-Anne Robinson Alberta, Canada RESPONSE—There is a documentary film on psychological evaluation of deaf and hard-ofhearing children available at no charge to professionals or parents who wish to borrow it. Entitled "Deaf, not Dumb," it is designed to reduce the misdiagnosis of deaf people by psychologists . Copies can be obtained from C-P Films, 4431 No. 60th Ave., Omaha, Neb. 68104. Frank Caccamise of the NTID Communications Program.) Nonetheless, let me say that the writer's suggestions seemed eminently sensible to me, as the grandparent of a prelingually deaf child who will arrive at her formal education with a great deal of signing fluency. I particularly applaud the writer's suggestion that "information about the history of ASL should be provided for all students and staff." Seems to me it's time that deaf children were taught about their own language! How about teaching them ASL grammar, too, at some point? Ann Hewitt Rockport, MA To the Editor: Upon the suggestion of the author, Salvatore J. Parlato, I am requesting permission to reprint his article in the September 1980 issue oÃ- American Annals of the Deaf, Chapter 23, "Nonverbal Films: Guidelines for their Utilization with Deaf Learners." We are considering reprinting the article in our semi-annual customer service publication, Lens and Speaker. Stephen C. Johnson U. of III. Film Center Letters to the Editor To the Editor: I'd like to comment on a letter to the Editor which appeared in the February '81 issue, but I can't refer to the writer by name for it appears that his/her name was omitted! (The writer was To the Editor: Some studies must pass muster more than others owing principally to their impact on the discipline. In so far as the research by Garrison, Tesch and De Caro (Annals, Dec. 1978) is just such an important—in fact, linchpin—study, it should not go uncritically treated. A.A.O. ¡June 1981 387 Letters to the Editor Statistical Strategy The authors apparently employed t-tests for differences between the means obtained from a deaf sample of students at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (n = 109) and a normative hearing sample (n = 626) which comprised the original standardization data underpinning the Tennessee Self Concept Scale (TSCS Manual, Fitts, 1965). This is a questionable tactic for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that it simply does not satisfy the straightforward canon of ceteris paribus in that the two samples of subjects, constituted as they were, cannot be considered equivalent in all respects save for hearing impairment. It is for this reason, more than any other, that testing for differences in performance between a group actually sampled and a standardization sample is not commonly advocated. In addition, this strategy biases the analysis in favor of obtaining significant differences, albeit mostly specious differences, because the standard error of the difference includes the standard deviations taken from the standardization sample. Statistically significant differences become almost ineluctable under this...