Visual-action code processing by deaf and hearing children

Abstract

Groups of deaf and hearing children, matched on age and non-verbal reasoning ability, were tested on one of three versions of a short-term memory task involving the production of action responses to previously paired visual stimuli. One version of the task required free (i.e. unordered) recall of actions when visual stimuli were presented simultaneously (i.e. in a composite figure). In the other versions of the task, there was serial presentation of the same sets of stimuli followed either by free recall or serial recall of actions that had been paired with the stimuli. There was a significant interaction between hearing status and task version, with deaf children showing superior performance on the simultaneous presentation-free recall task and inferior performance on the serial presentation-serial recall task. The results were interpreted in terms of differences in coding orientation arising from different histories of communicative experience.