Preventive intervention for school-age deaf children: the PATHS curriculum

This study examined the effectiveness of the PATHS (Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies) Curriculum on the social, cognitive, and behavioral status of elementary school-age deaf children. PATHS, a school-based preventive intervention model, was designed to improve children's self-control, emotional understanding, and problem-solving skills. The intervention field trial included a quasi-experimental, wait-list control design involving 57 children in 11 self-contained classrooms utilizing Total Communication. Teachers were trained in the intervention model and provided PATHS lessons during most of one school year. Results indicated that the intervention led to significant improvement in students' social problem-solving skills, emotional recognition skills, and teacher- and parent-rated social competence. There was no effect in this normative sample on teacher- or parent-rated psychopathology. One-and-two-year posttest results indicated maintenance of effects. Results on the wait-list control group indicated replication of effects in a second sample. Discussion focused on the nature of change in school-based prevention trials.     

Reading against all odds: a pilot study of two deaf students with dyslexia

Learning to read and write is a challenge for most deaf children due to their limited experiences with, and access to, spoken language. In the case of deaf students who have difficulty processing visual print, literacy becomes an even greater challenge. The study piloted an intervention procedure that incorporated the principles of automaticity, repetition, functional vocabulary, and a positive teacher-student relationship as recommended in programs for struggling readers and adapted them to the needs of two deaf high school students with dyslexia in an American Sign Language-English bilingual program. The findings reveal gains in reading ability on the formal measures, though not more than would be expected over a 6-month period simply due to development. The real improvements were noted in the students' attitudes toward literacy, improved social interaction, and increased self-confidence.     

Conversations between deaf children and their hearing mothers: pragmatic and dialogic characteristics

We examined communication between hearing mothers and their deaf or hearing children longitudinally at child-ages 22 months and 3 years. Specifically, we analyzed both the effects of child deafness and developmental change on pragmatic and dialogic characteristics of communication. From 22 months to 3 years, deaf and hearing children's communicative skills improved similarly along some dimensions: as they grew older, both deaf and hearing children increased the amount they communicated, became increasingly responsive to their mothers' attentional focus, and were responsible for initiating a higher proportion of the dyads' conversations. On the other hand, deaf children were less skilled at maintaining topics, and the pragmatic function of their communication was more likely to be unclear compared to hearing children. Deaf children were also more likely to direct their mothers and less likely to ask questions than hearing children. Communication by hearing mothers was primarily examined to determine the degree to which they controlled the interactions. Overall, mothers of deaf children were only more controlling along one dimension. Mothers of deaf children used more response controls than mothers of hearing children. However, the majority of measures suggested they did not exert more topic or turn-taking controls than did mothers of hearing children. In addition, mothers of deaf and hearing children seemed equally sensitive to their children's communication abilities. Communication by mothers of both deaf and hearing children changed in similar ways as their children developed. Most of the differences in communication by mothers of deaf and hearing children seemed attributable to the deaf children's linguistic delays. The results suggest that intervention efforts should be focused on fostering linguistic development and not general communication skills or changing maternal conversational control.     

Implementing a successful writing program in public schools for students who are deaf.

A 2-year project to improve the writing skills of children who are deaf included instruction for teachers in the process approach to teaching writing. The project encompassed 10 public school programs for students who are deaf and included 325 students in Grades 4-10 and 52 teachers. The project included specific training goals for teachers, a self-report procedure for the teachers, and a data-collection and analysis phase to assess short-term effects on students' writing. Teacher self-reports indicated widespread involvement in the project, and pretest and posttest results showed dramatic improvement in students' writing--particularly in grammatical skills. Scoring systems for students' papers are included.     

聋哑学生亲社会价值取向与亲社会行为的研究

通过问卷法对聋哑学校三到八年级学生共93人进行亲社会价值取向与亲社会行为的研究,发现聋哑学生亲社会价值取向难以判断的人数很多。聋哑学生认为大多数人的亲社会价值取向,与他们自身的亲社会价值取向在移情和利己这两个取向上有明显的差别。教师对聋哑学生的亲社会行为评价较高。利他的亲社会价值取向的聋哑学生产生利他行为的比例较少。     

Deaf Children’s Understanding of Other People’s Thought Processes

This study focuses on the ability of deaf children to predict the behaviours of other people, based on an understanding of their beliefs. An unexpected transfer task and a deceptive box task were used with a group of 55 severely/profoundly deaf children. Results reiterate the findings of other studies that many deaf children are grossly delayed in this important area of social functioning compared to their hearing counterparts. Deaf children of deaf parents/carers fared better than deaf children with hearing parents/carers. Implications for early intervention and education programmes are discussed.     

Development of implanted deaf children’s conversational skills

Previous studies of preverbal development have highlighted the recurrent difficulties experienced by deaf children in acquiring knowledge of the social rules and social skills pertaining to discourse. We expected cochlear implants in children with bilateral profound deafness to improve their use of verbal language, so that their communication skill profile resembled that of younger, hearing children. Using conversation samples taken from videos recorded every 6 months over a 2-year period, we monitored the development of communication skills in a group of 18 prelingually profoundly deaf children (mean implantation age, 3 years and 5 months). Results corroborated our hypothesis that the overall communication performances of children with cochlear implants improve, both quantitatively and qualitatively, as early as the first year post-implantation.     

Balancing between deaf and hearing worlds: reflections of mainstreamed college students on relationships and social interaction

This qualitative study of the social aspects of mainstreaming from the perspective of deaf college students indicates that for some students, social adjustment to college is complicated by experiences of separation and alienation from both deaf and hearing peers. Data were collected through open-ended interviews with deaf students who had little or no previous experience with or exposure to deaf culture or language before their arrival at a mainstream college environment. Feelings of isolation, loneliness, and resentment were most intense during orientation and first year, when alienation from the deaf student community appeared to be caused by lack of sign language skills, unfamiliarity with norms and values of deaf culture, and perceived hostility from deaf peers. Simultaneous experiences of separation from hearing peers appeared to be caused by physical barriers inherent in the classroom, residence hall, and cafeteria environments, as well as by discrimination from hearing peers, who tended to stereotype deaf students. Findings suggest that those involved in the administration and delivery of postsecondary programs for the deaf should investigate the experiences of students who arrive on campus without knowledge of sign language or familiarity with deaf culture and evaluate currently existing programs and services designed to meet these students' needs.     

The teaching and learning of multimeaning words within a metacognitively based curriculum

The study explored the effects of an 8-week intervention in which a teacher/researcher used direct instruction to show the multiple meanings of 7 words to 4 deaf students ages 11-13 years in a school for the deaf. Applying conclusions from emerging research that links knowledge and strategy with metacognitive skills, the teacher/researcher used specific metacognitive strategies to facilitate both the acquisition of the concept of multimeaning words and the ability to distinguish one meaning from another while reading, and thus improved the students' reading comprehension. The study participants were able to increase their vocabulary of multimeaning words as well as their reading comprehension in general, and, overall, experienced an improvement in their observable understanding and confidence when approaching the task of reading.     

Social processes and outcomes of in-school contact between deaf and hearing peers

Studies of social processes and outcomes of the placement of deaf students with hearing peers cannot be easily summarized, but can be grouped into a least four major categories of focus: social skills, interaction and participation, sociometric status and acceptance, and affective functioning. We review 33 studies available since 1980 in which a mainstreamed or included deaf sample was compared to another group. Studies indicated (1) that hearing students were more socially mature than deaf students in public schools, (2) that deaf students interacted with deaf classmates more than hearing ones, (3) that deaf students were somewhat accepted by their hearing classmates, and (4) that self-esteem was not related to extent of mainstreaming. There was a tendency for studies to use observational methods with very young children, teacher evaluations with middle school children, and questionnaires with older children. Three major areas of methodology limit general conclusions: samples, measurements of variables, and experimental manipulations. The reviewed studies provide a basis for understanding the social processes and outcomes in these placement situations; however, it is not possible to make broad generalizations about effects of placement.     

第二课堂对聋生心理健康状况的干预研究

聋生的心理健康问题是长期以来受社会关注的重要问题之一,聋校开展的心理健康教育虽取得一定成效,但也存在一些问题。采用为期一年的第二课堂活动的研究结果表明,聋生的心理健康水平较低,较严重的症状表现依次是强迫、人际敏感、偏执;团体干预活动对聋生的心理健康水平的提升有积极的促进作用,但未达到显著水平。聋童的心理健康教育需要长期不懈的坚持。     

Integration of a social skills training: a case study of children with low social skills

This study explores changes in children's social skills after a cognitive-social skills model intervention. The intervention was conducted over a period of 12 weeks within a regular preschool setting. Sixteen children including four considered to have low social skills participated in the study. Data analysis revealed that the four children with low social skills demonstrated changes in social skills through positive play behaviours such as asking positive questions, offering suggestions, initiating play episodes, and sharing play materials, although they had limited ability to maintain play episodes.     

Visual input enhancement via essay coding results in deaf learners' long-term retention of improved English grammatical knowledge

This study explored the efficacy of visual input enhancement, specifically essay enhancement, for facilitating deaf college students' improvement in English grammatical knowledge. Results documented students' significant improvement immediately after a 10-week instructional intervention, a replication of recent research. Additionally, the results of delayed assessment documented students' significant retention of that improvement five and a half months beyond the instructional intervention period. Essay enhancement served to highlight, via a coding procedure, students' successful and unsuccessful production of discourse-required target grammatical structures. The procedure converted students' written communicative output into enhanced input for inducing noticing of grammatical form and, through essay revision, establishing form-meaning connections leading to acquisition. With its optimal design characteristics supported by theoretical and empirical research, essay enhancement is a highly effective methodology that can be easily implemented as primary or supplementary English instruction for deaf students. The results of this study hold great promise for facilitating deaf students' English language and literacy development and have broad implications for second-language research, teaching, and learning.     

Classroom Interpreting and Visual Information Processing in Mainstream Education for Deaf Students: Live or Memorex?

This study examined visual information processing and learning in classrooms including both deaf and hearing students. Of particular interest were the effects on deaf students' learning of live (three-dimensional) versus video-recorded (two-dimensional) sign language interpreting and the visual attention strategies of more and less experienced deaf signers exposed to simultaneous, multiple sources of visual information. Results from three experiments consistently indicated no differences in learning between three-dimensional and two-dimensional presentations among hearing or deaf students. Analyses of students' allocation of visual attention and the influence of various demographic and experimental variables suggested considerable flexibility in deaf students' receptive communication skills. Nevertheless, the findings also revealed a robust advantage in learning in favor of hearing students.     

Early intervention using simultaneous communication with deaf infants: the effect on communication development

This report presents findings on an independent evaluation of an early intervention program for severely and profoundly deaf children. Located in Vancouver, British Columbia, this comprehensive program served families with children under age 3. The evaluation included comparison with a matched sample of deaf children without intervention. Included were a developmental assessment and videotape of linguistic and social interactions. Results indicated more developmentally mature communication and higher-quality interaction in families who had received intervention.     

Social participation of children and adolescents with cochlear implants: a qualitative analysis of parent, teacher, and child interviews

Psychosocial factors, including socioemotional well-being, peer relationships, and social inclusion with hearing and deaf peers, are increasingly becoming a focus of research investigating children with cochlear implants. The study reported here extends the largely quantitative findings of previous research through a qualitative analysis of interviews with parents, teachers, and pediatric cochlear implant users themselves in three eastern states of Australia. We interviewed 24 parents, 15 teachers, and 11 children and adolescents. The findings displayed commonalities across the three groups of participants, indicating positive experiences around the children's psychosocial development with their cochlear implants, but also ongoing difficulties communicating in groups of people and problems related to social skills. Some children had little contact with other deaf children (with or without cochlear implants) despite parents and teachers perceiving such contact beneficial. Children attending schools where there were other deaf children valued friendships with both deaf and hearing peers. Adolescence was a particularly difficult time for some as they struggled with feelings of self-consciousness about their deafness and external cochlear implant equipment and worries around friendships, dating, and their future place in the world. Recommendations for practice and further research are made.     

The relationship between reading achievement and morphological word analysis in deaf and hearing students matched for reading level

This study extends the findings of Gaustad, Kelly, Payne, and Lylak (2002), which showed that deaf college students and hearing middle school students appeared to have approximately the same morphological knowledge and word segmentation skills. Because the average grade level reading abilities for the two groups of students were also similar, those research findings suggested that deaf students' morphological development was progressing as might be expected relative to reading level. This study further examined the specific relationship between morphologically based word identification skills and reading achievement levels, as well as differences in the error patterns of deaf and hearing readers. Comparison of performance between pairs of deaf college students and hearing middle school students matched for reading achievement level shows significant superiority of younger hearing participants for skills relating especially to the meaning of derivational morphemes and roots, and the segmentation of words containing multiple types of morphemes. Group subtest comparisons and item analysis comparisons of specific morpheme knowledge and word segmentation show clear differences in the morphographic skills of hearing middle school readers over deaf college students, even though they were matched and appear to read at the same grade levels, as measured by standardized tests.     

Mastery Motivation in Deaf and Hearing Infants

The motivational characteristics of a small sample of normally developing deaf and hearing 12-month-old infants were assessed using procedures derived from Yarrow's work. The data supported the following conclusions: 1. Both deaf and hearing infants exhibit similar amounts of motivated behavior toward objects which suggests that auditory contact with their surroundings is not a determining factor in infants' attempts to master objects. 2. The deaf infants spent a longer period of time engaged in social behaviors than did the hearing infants and without any apparent sacrifice to the deployment of their task- and goal-directed activities. This finding implies that the deaf infants were more skillful at integrating the competing demands of social- and object-oriented endeavors than were their hearing peers. 3. The deaf infant engaged with the social environment and displayed a positive emotional response to the situation sooner than the hearing infants. Positive affect also was more likely to be followed by a social behavior for the deaf infants which indicates that the integration of social- and object-oriented activities serves either a different or more potent function in the early development of deaf infants. We believe that these data offer some preliminary, empirically based support for a developmental difference model when intervention strategies for deaf infants are contemplated. The policy implications for such a move may include a reduction in cognitively oriented activities and an increase in activities designed to capitalize on deaf infants' social and visual compensatory skills.     

Role-taking ability and social behavior in deaf school children

This study assessed the relationship between role-taking skill and social-emotional adjustment in deaf children. Twenty-three prelingually deafened boys and girls between 7 and 14 years of age were administered a role-taking task, surreptitious behavioral measures of helping and altruism, and a measure of nonverbal intelligence. In addition, two professionals experienced in working with deaf children rated the social and emotional adjustment, language/communication skills and role-taking ability of the participants. Performance on the role-taking task correlated positively with ratings of emotional adjustment, self-image, communicative effectiveness and role-taking skill. Role-taking performance, however, was not reliably related to any of the measures of social behavior. The study also considered several factors which may account for the apparent independence of role-taking and social behavior.     

Teachers' perspectives on student problematic behavior and social skills

This study examined program outcomes of student problem behavior and social skills, based on teachers' perspectives, before and after early behavioral intervention services. The study targeted students in kindergarten through grade 5 who were identified by the school system as being at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders. Students identified received early intervention services based on individualized positive behavior supports (i.e. social skills training, functional behavioral assessment, and team collaboration). The results indicate that early intervention services that teach social skills and use functional behavioral assessments to deal with problem behaviors are beneficial to children displaying behavioral challenges.