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

Cognitive Style as a Mediator in Reading Comprehension Test Performance for Deaf Students

Cognitive Style as a Mediator in Reading Comprehension Test Performance for Deaf Students Beth Davey Carol LaSasso The valid assessment of deaf students' educational achievements and cognitive processes remains a challenge for practitioners and researchers. This challenge is particularly apparent in the case of reading comprehension. As has been frequently noted, decisions concerning optimal measurement in reading comprehension should be based upon careful consideration of interactions between reader characteristics and testing-task characteristics (Benson & Crocker, 1979; Johnston, 1981; Kendall, Mason, & Hunter, 1980; Traub & Fisher, 1977). This paper summarizes relevant research that implicates cognitive style in the reading comprehension performance of deaf students under particular testing conditions. Many alternatives are available for describing aspects of comprehension processes, such as retelling activities, cloze procedures, maze techniques, and strategies requiring direct demonstration of comprehension (e.g., putting together a model car after reading its written directions). However, the most commonly used approach for assessing reading comprehension in both formal (e.g., standardized tests) and informal classroom settings is the wh- question form (Durkin, 1978). Evidence is accumulating that points to potential bias in reading comprehension questions related to such features as item format, type of information assessed, and task conditions (e.g., timing and reinspection-of-text options). Results from several recent studies have suggested that the reading performance of deaf students may be particularly affected by these task features (Davey, LaSasso, & Macready, 1983; LaSasso, 1979; McKee & Lang, 1982). One factor that appears to interact with such features of question tasks and thus to mediate comprehension performance is cognitive style (Dunn, Gould, & Singer, 1981; Pitts & Thompson, 1984; Witkin, Moore, Goodenough, & Cox, 1977). Cognitive style is a general term describing rather self-consistent stable ways of perceiving, remembering, information processing, and problem solving. These process-oriented individual differences (Wittrock, 1979) appear to reflect overlapping facets of cognitive, perceptual, and personality systems. Many of the dimensions of cognitive style researched over the years appear to relate to a variety of educationally relevant behaviors (Messick, 1983). Field dependence is one cognitive style dimension implicated in many reading performance tasks (Annis, 1979; Davey, 1983; Spiro & Tirre, 1980). Field dependence was originally described by Witkin (1950) using a variety of spatial tasks. In some of the group-administered paper-pencil embedded figures tests, subjects are required to identify a target form embedded within The complete version of this paper is available in microfiche or hard copy from ERIC Document Reproduction Service. Ask for Document No. Ed 247 710. 55 Cognitive Styles and Problem-Solving Strategies a complex design. Subjects with high scores on this task are termed fieldindependent . They appear to employ highly articulated analytical strategies and are capable of disembedding salient information from irrelevant, competing events. Subjects with low scores are identified as field-dependent. They react more globally to the total field and demonstrate greater dependence on external referents for structure. Several recent investigations have suggested a rather consistent relationship of field dependence to tasks involving memory efficiency and general cognitive restructuring (Bennink & Spoelstra, 1979; Berger & Goldberger, 1979; Davis & Frank, 1979; Goodenough, 1976; Robinson & Bennink, 1978). The limited number of studies involving cognitive styles and deafness (Blanton & Nunnally, 1964; Fiebert, 1967; Parasnis, in press; Parasnis & Long, 1979) suggest that field dependence may be a particularly relevant variable for study in explicating the roles of visual and spatial systems in verbal information-processing tasks for deaf students. Deafness may "place demands on the visual system which may alter both the functioning of the visual system and the selection and processing of information in the conceptual/memory system" (Parasnis & Samar, 1982, p. 54). A recent study (Davey & LaSasso, 1985) examined the relations of cognitive style to reading-comprehension-question performance for 48 prelingually , profoundly deaf adolescents. Three facets of assessment were considered: question format (multiple-choice, free-response), lookback condition (looking back, not looking back), and information type (literal questions, inferential questions). Analyses conducted for composite test scores and separate test facets revealed significant interactions between cognitive style and several reading comprehension test components. Relatively fieldindependent students scored higher than field-dependent students when not permitted to refer back to the passages for answering questions and when responding to inferential-type items in a multiple-choice format. These two interactions are consistent with theory (i.e., notions of the memory and restructuring components of field dependence) and with research utilizing hearing subjects (Witkin, Moore, Goodenough, & Cox, 1977; Witkin , 1978). From this study and its supporting research and theory, then, it appears that practitioners and researchers would do well to consider carefully the cognitive styles of...