Assessing Literacy in Deaf Individuals: Neurocognitive Measurement and Predictors ed. by D. A. Morere, T. Allen (review)

Using a toolkit of thirty modified and newly developed assessments administered to ninety deaf college students, seventeen authors associated with Gallaudet University’s Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2) center investigated how deaf college students who learn via a visual pathway in the (near) absence of auditory knowledge performed on measures of neurocognitive and achievement factors. Through a different, not deficit, model of learning, educators and researchers can design pedagogies that optimally account for cognitive, linguistic, and academic differences in the learning of deaf students. The Toolkit assessments and results are presented in thirteen chapters within four separate book parts.

Part 1 establishes the foundation of the Toolkit Project by detailing limitations inherent in current assessments for people who use American Sign Language (ASL), including reliance on spoken English, lack of deaf participants in norms, and inadequate test interpretations based on bias in the content or format. This discussion is expanded in chapter 11 and addresses assessment translation issues, including word frequency, equivalency, complexity, and perspective taking among languages. For example, when rendered in ASL, some English phrases require inclusion of spatial relation between objects and selection of perspective from which to interpret the sentence; these elements are not included in the original test language and may require higher levels of processing and interpretation skills on the part of the test-taker. However, educators and researchers must balance the risks inherent in assessments conducted via ASL with the great need for these assessments.

Chapter 1 briefly reviews each assessment in the Toolkit and provides an index of assessment abbreviations; however, due to the large number of assessments and constructs, a table including the function(s) and illustrations or computer screenshots of the assessments would be helpful to the reader. Participant recruitment and background characteristics are reviewed in chapter 2. The Toolkit sample of participants was skewed in favor of females (68%), early onset of deafness, deaf parents, and preference for ASL. The fifteen demographic tables presented in chapter 2 provide a snapshot of the variability within the deaf student population.

At this point I suggest a results-oriented reader immediately jump to chapter 13 for the short and sweet summary of assessments and implications. I was not disappointed. This chapter raises and answers two overarching questions: Yes, ten cohesive factors from the Toolkit assessments clarify the neurocognitive and achievement factors of signing deaf college students; and yes, these factors are affected by differences in background characteristics, with results reinforcing the critical role of early exposure to visual language, both ASL and English. Table 13.4 provides a list of all factors with related Toolkit assessments, which naturally leads the reader to individual chapters for detailed overviews of each assessment. Descriptive statistics and correlational results are included in easily readable tables within each chapter.

Part 2 reviews individual assessments and results related to general cognitive functioning, visuospatial ability, and memory and learning. Chapter 3 contains a detailed yet understandable review of Rasch analysis, in which test item difficulty and participant ability are analyzed to examine if an assessment encompasses a range of both. Executive functions, their relations to academic and life skills, and results within the deaf population are reviewed. Based on the premise that ASL is a spatial language that incorporates both visuospatial memory (the ability to remember and recall information about objects in space) and mental rotation (the ability to mentally manipulate multidimensional objects) skills into its linguistic structure, chapter 4 provides overviews of related assessments and results. Overall, visuospatial ability appears to have broader relations with academic functioning and linguistic memory, while mental rotation appears to have a more direct effect on ASL skills.

A significantly longer chapter 5 reviews working memory literature, including translation issues unique to the deaf population: sign length effect, possible capacity differences in auditory versus visual working memory, and phonological similarity in stimuli...