Abstract of Project Funded for FY 1999
| Verbal-sequential Processing, Verbal Memory and Reading Skills
in Deaf Young Adults Using Cued Speech or Sign Language
Holly Coryell and Eileen Sarett-Cuasay, Psychology Our research examines the effect of phonological processing abilities and verbal-sequential memory on the reading abilities of deaf young adults. Two groups of deaf individuals will be compared: One group using American Sign Language-based communication as their primary mode of communication and the other using Cued Speech as their primary mode. These groups will also be compared to a control group of hearing peers. Of the sixty subjects needed for this research, data for thirty have already been collected, thus, we are requesting funding to cover only the second half of our data collection process. Subjects will be administered a variety of measures meant to assess their skills in verbal-sequential memory, reading, and phonological processing. They will also be administered two screening measures to ensure that the subject qualifies for participation: one non-verbal intelligence test, and one test of communication familiarity in their primary communication mode. While deaf subjects are expected to perform more poorly than their hearing counterparts in verbal-sequential memory span (confirming previous research results), subjects who used Cued Speech are expected to have longer memory spans for this material, and are expected to encode such material according to the phonemic information of the stimulus words. Regardless of communication mode, those subjects most able to use phonological processing skills are expected to score higher on our reading measure. These results are expected to confirm the importance of teaching phonological procession skills to deaf children in order to foster good development of verbal-sequential memory and reading skills. |