Relations of social maturity, executive function, and self-efficacy among deaf university students

ABSTRACT

This study explored possible associations of social maturity, executive function (EF), self-efficacy, and communication variables among deaf university students, both cochlear implant (CI) users and nonusers. Previous studies have demonstrated differences between deaf and hearing children and young adults in EF and EF-related social and cognitive functioning. EF differences also have been demonstrated between hearing children and deaf children who use CIs. Long-term influences of cochlear implantation in the social domain largely have not been explored, but were examined in the present study in terms of social maturity, as it might be related to EF and communication variables. Replicating and extending recent findings, social maturity was found to be related to somewhat different aspects of EF in CI users, deaf nonusers, and hearing students, but unrelated to hearing status, CI use, or deaf students’ use of sign language versus spoken language. Self-efficacy proved a predictor of self-reported socially mature and immature behaviours for all groups. Individuals’ beliefs about their parents’ views of such behaviours was a potent predictor of behaviours for deaf CI users and those deaf students who reported sign language as their best form of communication.

KEYWORDS:

• Hearing loss
• self-efficacy
• social maturity
• cochlear implants
• social-emotional functioning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

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.

Dawn Walton is a 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.

Kathryn Crowe is a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Education Research Partnerships at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and adjunct research fellow in the School of Teacher Education at Charles Sturt University. Her research concerns speech and language development and multilingualism in children with hearing loss.

Georgianna Borgna is a 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.

William G. Kronenberger is Professor, Director of the Section of Psychology, and Executive Vice-Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Indiana University School of Medicine. His research focuses on biological and environmental influences on executive functioning, including hearing loss, cochlear implantation, family/social environment, and language.

ORCID

Marc Marschark http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4783-8831

Kathryn Crowe http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3496-5129

Notes

1. Participants referred to as ‘deaf’ varied in their hearing losses, but all were sufficient to qualify for related support services (i.e. sign language interpreting or real-time text) as determined on an individual basis by university personnel. Current hearing thresholds were not available for the purposes of this study.

2. The first eight LEAF subscales pertain to cognitive dimensions of EF. The last three tap academic dimensions of EF and were not used in the Marschark et al. (2017) study.

3. Many if not most deaf students in the population sampled use both spoken language and sign language to some extent. Because the two modes of communication are not mutually exclusive, participants were asked to identify their ‘best’ form of communication while also separately rating their sign language and spoken language skills. Eleven deaf students refused or neglected to identify their best form of communication.

4. Although the comparison of interest was between CI users and nonusers, results of deaf students who used hearing aids with those who did not were compared using independent-sample t-tests. Neither behaviour scores nor LEAF scores yielded any significant differences between those two groups, all ts ≤ (113) 1.54, and that variable will not be considered further.

Additional information

Funding

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