Michael D. Orlansky

Handedness patterns in deaf persons.

The handedness patterns of 226 deaf high-school and college students were compared to those of 210 college students with normal hearing. Both groups evidenced many more right-handed than left-handed members, as determined by responses to a hand preference questionnaire and performance on an activity test battery. There was, however, a significantly higher incidence of left-handedness among the deaf subjects than among the hearing. Moreover, the left-handed deaf students were found to be less likely to have deaf relatives, and to have been introduced to sign language later in their development than the deaf student population as a whole. These findings were interpreted as showing that age of acquisition of language was related to the development of handedness patterns, whereas auditory processing experience probably was not.

The effect of sign language rehearsal on deaf subjects' immediate and delayed recall of English word lists

The relationship between sign language rehearsal and written free recall was examined by having deaf college students overtly rehearse the sign language equivalents of printed English words. In studies of both immediate and delayed memory, word recall was found to increase as a function of total rehearsal frequency and frequency of appearance in rehearsal sets. The serial recall curves in both memory experiments evidenced a primacy effect, which was interpreted as resulting from increased rehearsal of the words in the initial positions over the course of the list. In contrast to findings from previous short- and long-term memory studies with normally hearing subjects, neither a recency nor a negative recency effect was found. High imagery words were rehearsed and recalled slightly more frequently in immediate memory, but there was no effect resulting from the different imagery values of the stimuli in delayed recall. These results are discussed in relation to current conceptualizations of memory and of linguistic processing by deaf individuals.

Early Sign Language Acquisition and Cognitive Development

Previous studies of early language and cognitive development have focused on children’s acquisition of spoken language skills and mastery of sensorimotor tasks. These studies generally have found that children reach their first steps in language production during their second year, after successful completion of most of the stages of sensorimotor development. The most widely disseminated view probably has been that advanced by Piaget (1962), Bruner (1966), and Sinclair (1971); namely that language is essentially an outgrowth of the development of the symbolic function, and that the ability to use symbols is a product of the completion of the sensorimotor period. More specifically, the capacity for mental representation, typically associated with the child’s understanding of object permanence, was seen as the primary cognitive prerequisite for the child’s acquisition of language.

Communicative gestures and early sign language acquisition

The gestural (non-sign) communication and symbolic functioning of 13 children who were acquiring Amercian Sign Language as a first language were compared with existing data for children learning a spoken language. Two communicative gestures, Giving and Com municative Pointing, were the strongest gestural correlates of lexicon size for both spoken and sign languages. However, whereas first referential words typically appear after the onset of Giving and Pointing, the initial sign productions of the children in the present study preceded the onset of Giving and Pointing. These children also attained various linguistic milestones at earlier levels of symbolic play maturity than did children learning to speak. These results suggest that the early stages of the acquisition of a visuomotor language and a spoken language emerge from the same communicative bases, but that certain linguistic capacities may be present earlier than generally has been recognized.

Active Learning and Student Attitudes toward Exceptional Children

An introductory undergraduate course in special education presents many opportunities for modifying attitudes. Typically the first formal exposure to the education of exceptional children, such a course is bound to exert some influence upon the students perceptions of disabled or gifted children. For the prospective regular classroom teacher, in fact, the introductory course may well offer the only exposure to exceptional children in the entire teacher preparation program.

Early Sign Language Acquisition: Implications for Theories of Language Acquisition

During the past 25 years, our understanding of how children acquire language has been considerably expanded by the results of a large number of empirical investigations. Although our knowledge of the language acquisition process has improved, there is as yet no widespread agreement regarding the important questions of when language is first used by children, and what abilities or characteristics should rightly be considered prerequisites or precursors to language.

Assessment of Visually Impaired Infants and Preschool Children

Vision plays a massive and critical role in children’s early cognitive development. Vision provides information that is far more extensive, more specific, and more rapid than any other sense; Padula (1983) maintained that some 80% of a child’s ability to discern relationships, and to establish the perceptual experience necessary for normal development, occurs through the visual sense. Indeed, vision is frequently considered the mediator of all other sensory information, the principal avenue of incidental learning, and even the factor that stabilizes a child’s interaction with his or her world (Barraga, 1983).

Education of Visually Impaired Children in the U.S.A.: Current Issues in Service Delivery.

Abstract This paper discusses current issues in the education of visually impaired children in the U.S.A., with emphasis on appropriate educational placement. A review of recent literature suggests that a dichotomy exists between advocates of public school and residential school programs, with differing interpretations of how Public Law 94‐142 will ultimately affect educational placement of the visually impaired. The author concludes that both types of programs will continue to operate and that cooperation between public and residential schools may increase thus creating a favorable climate for the provision of a continuum of appropriate educational services for visually impaired children.