How Deaf People Think, Learn, and Read
Thinking skills are developed when we experience the world around us through all our senses. Therefore, when Deaf children are deprived of language from birth onward, their thinking skills do not develop to their maximum potential.
Distant Senses
Vision
Visual-Spatial Skills
Teachers develop better science and math explanations by using space required in ASL that mimic visual aids
Visual Skills
Teachers need to control the environment so deaf students
can focus better
Deaf students often divide visual attention in the classroom
among the information on the board
The signing/speaking/gesturing teacher
Writing down notes
Looking at the interpreter
Reading
Don’t expect Deaf people to read or write
while you are talking
Deaf children who have no language are able to invent their own system of gestures to express feelings, wants, and needs
All of this requires a certain level of thinking
Signing deaf children develop cognitive and social skills faster because they depend on their vision to read faces and body language
Leroy Colombo (1904-1974)
Deaf people’s increased ability with peripheral vision is an
asset in most cases, but can be distracting in a classroom
Close proximity senses
Tactile-Kinesthetic
Learning by feeling objects such as their texture, weight, temperature, composition, shape, and material as well as the movements of these objects
Learning takes time
Will need multiple exposures being able to touch objects in order to build up a concept for them
A Deaf lifeguard who saved more than 900 swimmers on Galveston beaches from 1918 to 1967
Joint Attention
Combining physical skills and his visual attention and motion detection abilities he was quickly able to see and rescue swimmers from drowning
Using vision, touch, and sometimes hearing are avenues for the Deaf child to develop language and cognitive abilities
To further build concepts, language, and early literacy, caregivers may recite nursery rhymes in spoken language or sign language or even use tactile storybooks if the infant or toddler is DeafDisabled
To teach academic concepts, science and math teachers may use signed explanations, visual aids, multimedia, and rotating objects with other visuals as pictures, illustration, drawings, print, movies, and visual media
Visual Imagery and Spatial Memory
Signing Deaf students may be better in forming pictures in their mind (visual imagery), remembering pictures or objects in a room (visuospatial memory), and remembering moving objects compared to their hearing peers
Deaf children use their visual memory to learn language, read and write, and study other school subject
Deaf children
who sign from birth show better memory than hearing children on visuospatial tasks that do not require language.
They remember numbers, printed words, and pictures less than hearing children, but they do remember better with tasks such as recognizing unfamiliar faces and remembering paths of lights arranged in space
Deaf children use visual imagery in place of verbal codes and spatial coding to remember information (like furniture in a room) compared to hearing nonsigners
Other Deaf students (i.e., DeafBlind and DeafDisabled) may use visual, auditory, and tactile-kinesthetic memory skills for learning
Deaf children who sign from birth with Deaf parents
had equal ToM skills with hearing children
Deaf children who do not have access to conversations at home, and with hearing parents who do not sign, tend to have delayed ToM skills
The milestones for deaf and hearing babies provided
access to language from birth are similar
Deaf individuals do have better
peripheral vision. However, as Deaf children are easily attuned to movements in the environment, they may appear easily distracted and inattentive
Child-Directed Signs
Deaf parents and caregivers use the same techniques with Child-Directed Speech. They sign slower, bigger, and exaggerated
Conversational Triangle
Caregivers are animated when they sign, and they make sure they sign close to the objects or body so the babies can see the relationship between the signs and the objects
Deaf children often arrive at school learning conversational and academic language at the same time
Sign language, Deaf culture, and multicultures all support the development of thinking, learning, and reading for deaf children