Numerical and real-world estimation abilities of deaf and hearing college students

ABSTRACT

Various studies have examined possible loci of deaf learners’ documented challenges with regard to reading, usually focusing on language-related factors. Deaf students also frequently struggle in mathematics and science, but fewer studies have examined possible reasons for those difficulties. The present study examined numerical and non-numerical (real-world) estimation skills among deaf and hearing college students, together with several cognitive abilities likely to underlie mathematics performance. Drawing on claims in the literature and some limited evidence from research involving deaf children, the study also considered the possibility that the use of sign language and/or the use of cochlear implants and spoken language might facilitate deaf college students’ estimation skills and mathematics achievement more broadly. Results indicated relatively little impact of cochlear implant use or language modality on either estimation skills or overall mathematics ability. Predictors of those abilities differed for deaf and hearing learners. Results suggest the need to guard against overgeneralizations either within the diverse population of deaf learners or between deaf and hearing learners. They further emphasize the need for evidence-based practice in mathematics instruction appropriate for older deaf learners, rather than making assumptions from studies involving younger or narrowly-selected samples.

KEYWORDS:

• Deaf education
• mathematics ability
• cochlear implants
• sign language
• mathematical cognition
• deaf learners
• estimation
• visual-spatial ability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Georgianna Borgna is research associate and sign language interpreter in the Center for Education Research Partnerships at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a college of Rochester Institute of Technology. Her research interests focus on foundations of learning by deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

Dawn Walton is research associate and sign language interpreter in the Center for Education Research Partnerships at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a college of Rochester Institute of Technology. Her research interests focus on foundations of learning by deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

Carol Convertino is research associate and sign language interpreter in the Center for Education Research Partnerships at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a college of Rochester Institute of Technology. Her research interests focus on foundations of learning by deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

Marc Marschark is a professor and director of the Center for Education Research Partnerships at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and Honorary Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Aberdeen. His research concerns relations among language, cognition, and learning among deaf individuals across the lifespan.

Jessica Trussell is an assistant professor in the Masters of Science in Secondary Education program and a member of the Center for Education Research Partnerships at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Her primary research interest is developing evidence-based interventions for readers who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Notes

1. Unless otherwise indicated, ‘deaf’ is used broadly here to refer to individuals with sufficient hearing loss to qualify for appropriate support services in school settings.

2. Whether or not self-report measures are valid indicators of individuals’ skills in any particular domain is an empirical question. The self-report sign language and spoken language measures used in the present study have been validated in studies by Marschark et al. (2018) and Spencer et al. (2018).

3. Of tangential interest, a MANOVA using scores on the weight, length, volume, and distance dimensions on the units of measurement task as dependent variables yielded a significant effect of group only for volume, F(2,90) = 4.43, p < .05; Bonferroni-adjusted post-hoc tests indicated that the hearing participants outscored the CI users. The pattern was the same for all four dimensions, however, as hearing participants scored higher than deaf nonusers who scored higher than CI users.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by grant R01DC012317 from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of NIDCD or NTID.