Advances in Cognition, Education, and Deafness

Analysis

Analysis David F. Armstrong In 1985 I had the opportunity to write a similar analysis of papers from the First International Symposium on Cognition, Education, and Deafness. At that time, there was an identifiable underlying theme in the papers that reflected a positive direction in research in this area. That theme was an increasing attention to the importance of context in the study of language development and in the teaching of language. It is encouraging that this trend appears to be continuing , at least in the set of papers in this chapter. Several other questions that were raised in the 1985 analysis have also now been taken up in these papers: The effects on learning to write of the use of nonalphabetic scripts, further investigation of brain organization in deaf signers, and the effect of mixed linguistic modes (i.e., simultaneous speech and signing) on educational achievement. Also evident is a shift away from a "deafness as deficit" paradigm to an explicit interest in identifying educational approaches that maximize the perceptual and cognitive strengths of deaf students. It is especially noteworthy that the current research represented by these papers has moved beyond simple questions concerning the linguistic status of American Sign Language and other signed languages of the deaf, to more detailed questions concerning manageable strategies to enhance the learning and educational environments of deaf students. The range of these questions is impressive, from questions concerning the use of the entire visual-perceptual field, to questions regarding the effects of various forms of writing, to questions concerning appropriate use of various linguistic modes. It is also evident that increasingly sophisticated technologies and methodologies are being applied to these questions. The paper by Swisher represents several of the points outlined above. The 176 Analysis 177 specific intent here is to identify how much of the visual field is available for decoding linguistic (signed) information. This question is particularly critical for educators of the deaf, because vision, unlike hearing, requires physically directed attention. A normal expectation would be that signs could be decoded only if received by foveal vision. Therefore, it is important for parents, teachers, and others to know if sign detection is possible in the peripheral vision. That is an important finding, with possible consequences for the design of educational settings for deaf students. The diverse set of research questions considered among this group of papers suggests the need for individual consideration to be given to each of them; let us commence with the paper by Davey and King. This paper examines the effect of context on deaf students' ability semantically to decode unknown written words. An important finding is that training in the use of context to extract meaning might be beneficial for at least some deaf readers. This result again is indicative of a trend noted in 1985, toward more holistically based approaches to assessing the reading competence of deaf students. Explicit attention to the knowledge base of students can then be recommended as an integral part of curriculum in the education of deaf students. Hoemann and Tweney provide a retrospective analysis of nearly two decades of work on the linguistic strengths of deaf students. Again, we need to be cognizant of the importance of moving away from a deficit model in deaf education, toward models that seek to take advantage of deaf students' strengths. Hoemann and Tweney present evidence concerning the extent to which processing strategies in ASL and English are similar, but it is also important to consider ways in which they may be different; just such a study is summarized by Fok, Klima, van Hoek, and Bellugi. . In 1985 we raised the question of whether deaf children might differ from hearing children in their ability to use various kinds of scripts, and Fok et al. present evidence that this varied use is indeed the case. Here we have evidence of differences in processing strategies that may actually give deaf students an advantage over hearing students in one aspect of written language learning. An additional point that we should now consider is whether there might be any advantage in introducing more complex scripts into the teaching of American students, given this information concerning the abilities of Chinese deaf students. Lou, Strong, and DeMatteo consider the challenging and controversial question of whether simultaneous use of speech and sign in educational environments may have detrimental effects on general cognitive functioning. This question represents a direct challenge to the Total Communication philosophy that has dominated the education of the...