Symbolic and Linguistic Processes in the Deal. Final Report.

Reported were over 20 related studies that were intended as attempts to discover the psychological implications of deafness, with an emphasis on the perceptual-cognitive manifestations. The report was divided into three sections: the first reported the results of many studies investigating mainly the relationship between language and perception and language and cognition and which use memory as the vehicle of experimentation. The second chapter focused on results of psycholinguistic studies. The third section reported a series of interrelated studies investigating the causes behind the emotional or affective immaturity found to be frequently displayed by a large number of deal persons. Selected general findings were that the deaf may have problems with sequencing information where nonverbal forms are involved, that auditory input is not necessary for the learning of perception of rhythms, that the deal show superior performance for signable words but do not differ from the hearing on words that do not have sign equivalents, and that the deaf show better reading performance level when written materials are presented in sign order rather than in English order. (CB)