The Primary Mode of Human Communication and Complex Cognition

This study compared deaf and hearing adolescents at the level of formal operations, specifically, on their ability to solve analogies. Language bias was controlled by designing a research instrument containing figure analogies and word analogies; in the word analogies, all terms were drawn from a second-grade or lower vocabulary level. The theoretic premise, that the oral-aural mode of human communication provides sensory experience that facilitates the perception of the contrast necessary to cognition and hierarchic cognitive development, led to the prediction that normal hearing students would demonstrate better analogical reasoning than would congenitally profoundly deaf students. This hypothesis was supported. The results are discussed in light of methodological as well as theoretic implications for research on cognition and deafness.