This review addresses the question of how early access to sign language influences the development of deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs) by examining the literature surrounding the topic across the domains of spoken/written language development, cognitive development, and sociocultural development. Although research in the realm of…

Infants are born highly sensitive to the natural patterns found in languages. They use their perceptual sensitivity to acquire detailed information about the structure of languages in their environment. To date, most studies of infant perception and early language acquisition have investigated spoken/auditory languages and hearing infants (e.g.…

In U.S. deaf education, disablement results from a normative interpretation of disability in the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. However, Vygotsky's "Fundamentals of Defectology" (1993) allows educators to view current deaf education pedagogical practices through a sociocultural-constructivist lens and reject the current…

In recent years, the intersection of cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and neuroscience with regard to deaf individuals has received increasing attention from a variety of academic and educational audiences. Both research and pedagogy have addressed questions about whether deaf children learn in the same ways that hearing children…

This case study reports on the progress of Navon, a 13-year-old boy with prelingual deafness, over a 3-month period following exposure to Logo, a computer programming language that visualizes specific programming commands by means of a virtual drawing tool called the Turtle. Despite an almost complete lack of skills in spoken and sign language,…

Background: Previous studies in the literature report that deaf individuals who experience late access to language perform poorly on false belief tests of Theory of Mind (ToM) compared with age-matched deaf and hearing controls exposed to language early. Methods: A group of 22 deaf Nicaraguans (aged 7 to 39 years) who learned Nicaraguan Sign…

Examination of linguistic and cognitive skills of 59 deaf students (7-15 years old) revealed that Ss whose parents consistently signed to them showed greater syntactic comprehension and more advanced operational skills than students whose parents signed less consistently. (Author/CL)

R. Conrad's position that the use of forms of manual communication in the education of deaf students is highly effective and desirable is supported; however, a reinterpretation of his work is offered to provide a more solid theoretical base and to indicate judicious and appropriate strategies in educational practice. (Author/SW)

This study investigated whether deafness contributes to enhancement of visual spatial cognition, independent of knowledge of sign language. Comparison of 12 congenitally deaf children not exposed to sign language and 12 matched hearing controls found that the groups did not differ in their performance on visual spatial skills tests. (Author/DB)

Differential effects of parental deafness and early exposure to manual communication were not observed in the cognitive and communication performance of the 38 experimental subjects. Furthermore, the Delayed sign language group performed significantly better than the early American Sign Language group on tests of speech perception and speech…

Two studies investigated the effect of language input on theory of mind by comparing the performance of deaf native-signing children (ages 4 to 8) raised by deaf signing parents and deaf late-signing children raised by hearing parents on "thought picture" measures of theory of mind. Findings indicated that deaf late signers showed…

The ability to attribute false beliefs by 155 deaf children (ages 5 and 8) grouped by communication mode and parental hearing status was compared to that of 39 hearing children (ages 4 to 6). Effective representational abilities were demonstrated by deaf children of deaf parents, whereas those with hearing parents appeared delayed, with…

Deaf children with signing parents, nonnative signing deaf children, children from a hearing impaired unit, oral deaf children, and hearing controls were tested on theory of Mind (ToM) tasks and a British sign language receptive language test. Language ability correlated positively and significantly with ToM ability. Age underpinned the…

The paper reviews theories of Lev Vygotsky, founder of the Soviet school of cognitive developmental psychology and an architect of Soviet defectology, the discipline concerned with physically and mentally handicapped children. Three of his basic concepts are explained: (1) "cultural" versus "natural" mental functions; (2)…

The study examined the rate and order of conservation in 24 deaf children, ages 8.2 to 12.9 years using standard Piagetian instructions and procedures in sign language. Even the older children failed to demonstrate control over the conservation concept suggesting the presence of a cognitive difference in deaf children. (DB)