Deaf native signers, usually deaf children of deaf parents, however, comprise only about 5% of deaf individuals, and the generality of findings from those studies with regard to the deaf population at large remains unclear. Native signers also frequently have been found to demonstrate better visual-spatial memory than sequential-verbal memory and better visual-spatial memory than nonsigning individuals ( Hall & Bavelier, 2010 ). The present study extends that research with the goal of distinguishing the effects on working memory of hearing loss, which has been associated with poorer memory performance across a number of verbal tasks, from the effects of sign language skill, which has been associated with better memory performance in a number of visual-spatial tasks.īoutla, Supalla, Newport, and Bavelier (2004) provided evidence that hearing individuals and native-signing deaf individuals have comparable working memory capacities (see Rudner, Andin, & Rönnberg, 2009, for discussion). Centrally involved in language comprehension, problem solving, and learning, working memory among deaf individuals has been found to be a significant predictor of reading ( Garrison, Long, & Dowaliby, 1997 Geers, 2003 ) and mathematics achievement ( Gottardis, Nunes, & Lunt, 2011 Lang & Pagliaro, 2007 ).
At the interface of (spoken, printed, and signed) language and cognition, particular attention has focused on working memory, the temporary memory system that allows “humans to understand and mentally represent their immediate environment, to retain information about their immediate past experience, to support the acquisition of new knowledge, to solve problems, and to formulate, relate, and act on current goals” ( Baddeley & Logie, 1999, p. Memory functioning among deaf individuals has been of theoretical and practical interest to investigators for more than 100 years because of its importance for understanding relations of language and cognition as well as academic outcomes for deaf learners ( Emmorey & Lane, 2000 Marschark & Wauters, 2011 Mayberry, 2002 ). The results are consistent with and extend recent findings concerning the effects of hearing status and language on memory and are discussed in terms of language modality, hearing status, and cognitive abilities among deaf and hearing individuals.
There were no differences among the groups on the task involving visual-spatial stimuli. Three complex memory span tasks revealed overall advantages for hearing signers and nonsigners over both deaf signers and deaf nonsigners on 2 tasks involving memory for verbal stimuli (letters). That situation is resolved in the present study by including deaf students who use spoken language and sign language interpreting students (hearing signers) as well as deaf signers and hearing nonsigners. However, hearing status and preferred language modality (signed or spoken) frequently are confounded in such studies. Deaf individuals who are native signers, meanwhile, have been found to score higher on visual-spatial memory tasks than on verbal-sequential tasks and higher on some visual-spatial tasks than hearing nonsigners.
#Creating a likert scale in eprime serial
Deaf individuals have been found to score lower than hearing individuals across a variety of memory tasks involving both verbal and nonverbal stimuli, particularly those requiring retention of serial order.
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