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

A Contextualist Perspective of Language Processing by Prelingually Deaf Students

A Contextualist Perspective of Language Processing by Prelingually Deaf Students Janis Morariu Roger Bruning The often heated controversy in deaf education concerning language acquisition continues to pervade the literature on cognition, education, and deafness. Two major questions have emerged: Which language system will best prepare deaf individuals to communicate effectively in society? and Which language system will best allow for normal cognitive development within prelingually deaf individuals' unique information-processing system ? Although the most widely accepted solution to the first question is to provide deaf learners with proficient English-language skills, nearly half of the deaf students age 20 and younger read at less than "a 4.5 gradeequivalent level (Trybus & Karchmer, 1977). This paper focuses on the second question through an examination of the influence of language mode (print or sign) and syntax (English or American Sign Language [ASL]) on prelingually deaf individuals' access to meaning, which is an essential component of effective communication. Some theorists purport that the prelingually deaf child's lack of auditory input leads to the development of a visual information-encoding system that is vastly different from that developed in normally hearing individuals (Goldin-Meadow & Mylander, 1983; Kretschmer & Kretschmer, 1978). In support of this theory, the majority of encoding studies suggest that the encoding and retrieving of information from a print medium by deaf individuals may actually be a multiple-step process in which they first transform a typically verbal code (printed English) into a visual mode (a sign language system) for processing, and then they recode the stored visual code back into a verbal code to communicate in what is normally a spoken language system (Frumkin & Anisfeld, 1977; Hanson, 1982; Shand, 1982; Treiman & Hirsh-Pasek, 1983). In an attempt to use the sign-based encoding orientation of deaf children to facilitate English-language acquisition, many educational progr~ms for deaf learners adopt a system of signed English in which signs are borrowed and modified from ASL while the syntax of English is held intact (Kretschmer & Kretschmer, 1978). Although signed English appears to be similar to ASL in that the two share much of their sign vocabulary, they are actually two distinct language systems. ASL is a visual and conceptual language system, whereas signed English is based on an auditory and temporal orientation (Bellugi & Klima, 1975; Kretschmer & Kretschmer, 1978). American Sign Language is acquired by many deaf individuals through an informal, and often sporadic, exposure to other deaf individuals who use ASL outside of the family and the formal classroom environment (Hoemann , 1975; Kretschmer & Kr~tschmer, 1978). Although most deaf children The complete version of this paper is available in mircofiche or hard copy from ERIC Document Reproduction Service. Ask for Document No. ED 247 714. 88 receive exclusive formal instruction in the use of the English-language system , often through a variety of modes and methods, most are likely to choose to use a form of ASL as adults (Hoemann, 1975; Kretschmer & Kretschmer, 1978). The main question that arises at this point is why most prelingually deaf individuals adopt ASL, which is so radically different from English, as their primary language when they have been formally trained in and reinforced for acquiring standard English (signed, spoken, and/or written ). Perhaps visual and conceptual languages such as ASL are better suited than English to deaf individuals' information-processing capabilities. The contextualist perspective of information processing suggests that the total language encounter will exert a significant influence on an individual 's processing of a language experience (Jenkins, 1974; Watkins & Tulving, 1975). When this view of information processing is applied to the deaf individual's experience, the language encounter may include any combination of printed or signed modes of information presented in either English or ASL syntax. In a study by Morariu and Bruning (1984), two experiments were conducted on the influence of language mode (print or sign) and syntax (English or ASL) on a free-recall task. Experiment 1 tested the effects of reading meaningful print passages in ASL or English on deaf and hearing high school subjects. The results supported an effort toward comprehension interpretation by only the hearing subjects. Deaf subjects (not trained in ASL) exhibited a familiarity with ASL syntax that was not exhibited by the hearing subjects. In Experiment 2, meaningful passages were presented to prelingually deaf subjects in four language contexts (signed English, signed ASL, printed English, and printed ASL). Results showed greater recall from ASL than from English contexts, irrespective of mode of presentation. These experiments indicated that the visual orientation of...