Ronald R. Kelly

Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students' Memory of Lectures with Speech-to-Text and Interpreting/Note Taking Services

In one investigation with 48 deaf and hard-of-hearing (hh) high school students and a second investigation with 48 deaf/hh college students, all viewed one lecture with an interpreter and one with the C-Print® speech-to-text support service. High school students retained more lecture information when they viewed speech-to-text support, compared to interpreter support, and when they studied note taker notes or a hard copy of the text after viewing the lecture, compared to no opportunity to study. For college students, however, there was no difference between retention with these two kinds of support or with study of notes, compared to no study. For the college investigation, there was a three-way interaction due to markedly better performance on a multiple-choice than on a sentence-completion test when students viewed an interpreter and did not study notes. This result may have reflected difficulty in comprehending unfamiliar terms. Reading proficiency was also related to retention.

Relating Deaf Students' Reading and Language Scores at College Entry to Their Degree Completion Rates

Graduation patterns were examined for 905 deaf students (1990-1998) at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Students with higher reading and language skills had the best overall graduation percentage. Comparison of recipients of different degrees—bachelor of science (BS) versus fine arts (BFA); associate of applied science (AAS) versus occupational studies (AOS)—showed 92% of BS and 82% of AAS graduates reading at the 9th-grade level or above, versus 65% of BFA and 47% of AOS graduates. Interestingly, 80% of non-degree-earning students read at the 9th-12th grade levels; in absolute terms, they outnumbered graduates with similar reading skills in the AAS and BFA programs combined, and in the BS program. This indicates a need for improved counseling, placement, and retention strategies. Students performed similarly across degree categories, regardless of curriculum requirements and difficulty. Only non-degree-earning students had significantly lower grade averages.

Problem-Solving Strategies for Teaching Mathematics to Deaf Students

Three teaching and learning strategies for problem solving were implemented with first- and second-year deaf college students enrolled in mathematics courses at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), Rochester Institute of Technology. These strategies involved the students in ( a ) giving an explanation to a peer observer in sign language, after which they would put their understanding of a problem and its solution in writing; ( b ) visualizing the problem-solving process prior to starting to solve a problem; and ( c ) observing their teacher modeling the analytical process step by step for a sample problem prior to solving math word problems. The students were asked to solve two types of problems: typical word problems, and a visual/ manipulative puzzle that would provide a problem-solving experience that would contrast with the experience of solving a problem presented in text format. The results showed that these kinds of instructional strategies can enhance the problem-solving performance of deaf and hard of hearing college students.

Economy in the Acquisition of English Universal Quantifier Sentences: The Interpretations of Deaf and Hearing Students and Second language Learners at the College Level.

English sentences containing the universal quantifiers each, every, and all are highly complex structures in view of the subtleties of their scope properties and resulting ambiguities. This study explored the acquisition of universal quantifier sentences as reflected in the performance of three diverse college-level student groups on a multipicture sentence interpretation task. The participant groups (hearing native speakers, deaf students, and second language learners of English) all exhibited fundamental knowledge of universal lexical, semantic, and syntactic properties that contribute to quantifier sentence interpretation. The native speakers outperformed the deaf and second language groups, whose performance was strikingly parallel. Performance patterns are explained in terms of the influences of derivational economy, including the option to restrict in situ indefinite noun phrases to singleton indefinites. The symmetry effect observed in child language studies was also observed among the college-aged participants in this study. It is explained in terms of a pragmatic challenge in managing contextual information that invokes an unexpected singleton indefinite interpretation. The results contribute to the understanding of sentence comprehension under conditions of restricted learner access to target language input and underscore the value of seeking correlates of theory-internal derivational economy in language acquisition and use.

L2 AND DEAF LEARNERS’ KNOWLEDGE OF NUMERICALLY QUANTIFIED ENGLISH SENTENCES

This study assessed knowledge of numerically quantifi ed English sentences in two learner populations—second language (L2) learners and deaf learners—whose acquisition of English occurs under conditions of restricted access to the target language input. Under the experimental test conditions, interlanguage parallels were predicted to arise from acquisitional pressures imposed by derivational economy on universal grammar (UG)‐guided semantic interpretation. The results of a task in which participants matched sentences to multiple discourse depictions confi rmed the predicted parallels. However, in matching underinformative sentences to depicted contexts, the L2 and deaf learner groups overactivated discourse-pragmatic knowledge. The restriction of indefi nite noun phrases to singleton indefi nites and the cancellation of scalar implicatures rendered sentences more informative in underinformative contexts, producing incorrect—although principled—interpretations. These results inform English acquisition at the interface of semantics and discourse pragmatics and provide further support that economy pressures yield L2 learner and deaf learner interlanguage parallels as observed, for instance, in learners’ interpretative knowledge of universally quantifi ed English sentences.

Deaf Students' Knowledge of Subtle Lexical Properties of Transitive and Intransitive English Verbs.

Deaf Learners’ Acquisition of fundamental lexical properties of high-frequency English verbs related to transitivity and intransitivity was examined, including the subtle distinction between unergative and unaccusative verbs. A 140-item sentence acceptability rating scale was used to assess this lexical knowledge in deaf college students at two English proficiency levels, plus a control group of hearing native English speakers. Hypotheses addressed the influence of relative derivational complexity and overall English proficiency on verb acquisition. Though the hearing group showed greater accuracy in sentence acceptability judgments and greater accuracy tied to overall English proficiency, the two deaf groups displayed fairly robust knowledge of targeted verbs’ fundamental transitive and intransitive lexical properties. Nevertheless, verb acquisition remains a formidable challenge. Further research should assess deaf students’ knowledge of these lexical properties in lower-frequency English verbs, including unaccusative verbs prevalent in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) and other academic discourse.

Developing Deaf Students Fraction Skills Requires Understanding Magnitude and Whole Number Division

Research has shown that fraction magnitude and whole number division are important precursors to learning and understanding fractions. Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students are consistently challenged with learning fractions from K-12 through college. Sixty DHH college students were tested for both their understanding of magnitude between two fractions and their ability to calculate whole number division. The results showed that both understanding the magnitude between two fractions and whole number division are significantly associated with accurately calculating arithmetic functions of fractions with like denominators and different denominators that required them to add, subtract, multiply, and divide two fractions. Understanding fraction magnitude and whole number division were also significantly associated with their self-rated confidence of math performance with fractions. Tangentially, DHH college students’ English reading ability was significantly, but modestly associated with their fraction performance.