Demographic characteristics and rates of progress of deaf and hard of hearing persons receiving substance abuse treatment

A lack of demographic information and data related to the achievement of short-term goals during substance abuse treatment among persons who are deaf or hard of hearing dictated the need for the study. New York State maintains a database on all individuals who participate in treatment. Within this database, 1.8% of persons in treatment for substance use disorder (SUD) were also deaf or hard of hearing. As hypothesized, members of the deaf and hard of hearing sample were older, likelier to be white, and likelier to be female, relative to the SUD-only group. For both groups, alcohol, heroin, and cocaine had the highest rates of reported use. Achievement of short-term goals in the areas of alcohol use, drug use, vocational/educational goals, and overall goals indicated no differences between the deaf and hard of hearing group and the SUD-only group. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Using Gestalt theory to teach document design and graphics

Gestalt psychology principles of figure‐ground segregation, symmetry, closure, proximity, good continuation, and similarity provide a simple yet powerful analytic vocabulary for discussing page layout and graphics. The six principles apply readily to typography, white space, data tables and maps, the relation between graphics and text, and other facets of textual design. The principles explain many difficulties that readers have in processing texts and graphics, and they explain why well‐designed pages and graphics are effective.