Cognition, Education, and Deafness: Directions for Research and Instruction

Analysis

Analysis Pat Spencer Day Kathryn P. Meadow-Orlans The three papers in part 3 are concerned with both cognitive and linguistic development of deaf children in three different age groups: 1-3-year-olds (Pien), 3-6-year-olds (Mann), and adolescents (Athey). Profound and difficult issues are raised about (a) the relationship of language to thought, and cognitive to linguistic development and (b) the effect of environmental differences in deaf children's development of language and cognitive skills. Pien studied the pragmatics (functional use) of language of deaf toddlers with hearing parents, all of whom were learning a signed language. Pragmatics is an aspect of language development felt to be heavily related to both symbolic abilities (cognition) and social interaction (Bates, 1976a, 1976b; Halliday, 1975). Discussion of Pien's study focused on the relative lack of the children's use of the informative function as compared to hearing children's productions at the one- and two-word stage of expressive language. This finding corroborates earlier work with preschool-age hearing-impaired children by Curtiss, Prutting, and Lowell (1979), and Day (1981). Of special interest, however, was Pien's apparently serendipitous finding that the one subject who engaged most frequently in symbolic or imaginary play was also most proficient in using language for the informative function and that that function was expressed primarily during symbolic play. Pien proposed that this apparent relationship could have implications for pragmatic assessment procedures and for parent-infant or toddler educational programs. She suggested that the child's participation in imaginary play could encourage the development and use of the informative function in language. Pien also pointed out that her signing deaf subjects might develop a different pragmatic system than that of hearing children due to the more restricted use of signing by persons in the deaf subjects' environment. In addition to the often noted restriction in the number of people that those children can observe and "oversee" using language (Liben, 1978; Schlesinger , 1978), studies have reported that hearing parents of deaf children tend to give more directive or instructive messages and fewer explanatory or informative messages to their children than do parent-child dyads who share hearing status (Hyde, Power, & Elias, 1980; Meadow, Greenberg, Erting, & Carmichael, 1981; Schlesinger & Meadow, 1972). The functional language system that is modeled for deaf children of hearing parents therefore may be structurally different from that to which hearing children are exposed. Some modifications in procedure would strengthen and simplify the interpretation of Pien's important work. These modifications would be aimed toward more standardization of the context in which the communicative behaviors are observed. First, instructions to parents should be uniform. Pien noted in her discussion that the parent of the child who demonstrated symbolic play during the taping session was asked to engage 34 in some pretend play; other parents were not. This procedure was done because the parent had apparently originally misinterpreted the purpose of the session and seemed to be limiting the kind of activity that was occurring. After this child's symbolic play was observed, Pien asked the children's teachers which of the children frequently engaged in such play in the classroom . The response was that the subject who became involved in such play during the taping session was the only child reported to do so in the classroom . This anecdotal evidence seems to support Pien's interpretation of her data, but her findings would be strengthened by having the instructions uniform for all participants in the activities. Another variation in the context of Pien's communication samples is the sex of the participating parent. Some of her subjects were taped while interacting with their mothers; at least one subject was interacting with her father. Literature regarding interaction between hearing children and their parents suggests that there are some interactive differences related to the sex of the parent (Lamb, 1978). Interaction studies of hearing-impaired children and their parents should, therefore, attempt to control for this factor. Mann carefully avoided including language behaviors in her study of preschool orally trained deaf children's play skills. Discussion of her findings and interpretations, however, focused on the same topics of communication and interaction that are so salient in the Pien paper. In comparison with a matched group of hearing children, the deaf children engaged in the same types of play but spent less time in each activity. In addition, one of Mann's older deaf subjects engaged in considerably more isolated, but symbolically advanced, play than did...