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Classification Skills in Normally Hearing and Oral Deaf Preschoolers: A Study in Language and Conceptual Thought
- Gallaudet University Press
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Classification Skills in Normally Hearing and Oral Deaf Preschoolers: A Study in Language and Conceptual Thought Jenny Friedman The issue of the role of language in thought has been of theoretical interest to philosophers and psychologists for many years. A variety of methodologies have been used for the empirical study of this issue, including the use of atypical populations as control groups (Furth, 1966; Oleron, 1977). The deaf have been most widely studied because the lack of oral language is the most significant deficit resulting from profound congenital deafness (Kretschmer & Kretschmer, 1978; Meadow, 1980). For deaf children trained exclusively by the oral method of education, there is a generalized language deficiency because signing is not used to compensate for their limited oral abilities. Understanding the cognitive skills of these hearing-impaired children has implications for the role which language plays in various aspects of cognition. The research reported here focuses specifically on the area of concept development. The author's study matched 20 normally hearing and 20 deaf preschool children on age, performance/intelligence, and socioeconomic status. The deaf children met the criteria of (a) exclusively oral educational training, (b) no use of signing in their homes, and (c) below-average performance on an oral receptive vocabulary measure. All the normally hearing children had at least average oral receptive skills. These criteria ensured that the two groups of children, though closely matched on factors that might affect cognitive performance, were significantly discrepant in their language skills. There is some evidence that the role that language plays in concept acquisition varies as a function of the level of abstraction at which categories are formed (Horton & Markman, 1980; Rosch, Mervis, Gray, Johnson, & Boynes-Braem, 1976). Three levels of classification were explored in this author's study. The first, the perceptual level, involves sorting by visually perceptible, nonsymbolic attributes such as color and shape. The basic level of abstraction (e.g., dogs, chairs) is defined as the most inclusive level at which there are attributes common to all or most members of the category (Rosch et al., 1976). At the superordinate level (e.g., animals, furniture) members share fewer attributes. Two free-sorting trials separated by a structured-sorting procedure were administered for two separate tasks at each of the three levels of classification . In the first free-sorting trial (Trial 1), the child was given an array of nine items and was encouraged to sort them appropriately into three baskets . During the structured-sorting task, the examiner placed one examplar from each class in each of the three baskets. The child then received the remaining objects, one at a time, and decided in which baskets the items should be placed. If the child chose the incorrect basket, the examiner nonverbally corrected the selection by placing the object in the correct bas70 ket. In the second free-sorting trial (Trial 2), the child was given the objects to sort in a manner identical to Trial 1. Finally, receptive and expressive knowledge of the category labels was tested. Results indicated that the difference in categorization skills between the deaf and normally hearing children on Trial 1 was not significant at the perceptual or basic levels, but it was significant at the superordinate level. This finding implies that language is an important factor in the acquisition of superordinate level concepts, while it is not essential to the formation of perceptual and basic level categories. This result is further supported by a significant correlation between performance on superordinate level classification and labeling. No correlation was found at the basic level. The scores of the deaf and normally hearing groups were not significantly different at any level of classification for either structured sorting or Trial 2 free sorting. The fact that their performances did not differ at the perceptual or basic levels is further evidence that language competence is not necessary for acquisition of these concepts. The similar superordinate level performance of the two groups, however, indicates a strong improvement by the deaf children following Trial 1. It was hypothesized that the additional structure of the task allowed the deaf children to use alternative strategies, such as the similarity in the location (e.g., food is found in the kitchen) and function of the items (e.g., clothes are to wear), in order to classify the superordinate categories. Although this hypothesis suggests that superordinate categories can be formed without knowledge of the labels, it is clear that language is the most direct and useful method for acquiring...