How deaf and normally hearing students convey meaning within and between written sentences

Author(s): Snyder, L. S., Mayberry, R.

Journal/Book: Volta Rev. 1996; 98: 3417 Volta Place NW, Washington, DC 20007. Alexander Graham Bell Assoc for the Deaf. 9-38.

Abstract: Forty-nine normally hearing and 49 severely and profoundly deaf or hard-of-hearing participants representing five age groups (10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 years) wrote compositions elicited from the Accident/Emergency picture of the Peabody Language Development Kit. This study compared the frequency and proportional distribution of the use of written-language variables that represented (1) intrasentential syntax-T-unit analysis, (2) intrasentential semantics-propositional analysis, (3) intersentential syntax-syntactic cohesive devices, and (4) intersentential semantics-semantic cohesive devices. Though there were no significant differences between the writing of the normally hearing and deafer hard-of-hearing students in the total number of propositions, cohesive devices, and T-units, there was a significant difference between the total number of words produced. Differences were found between the strategies chosen by the deafer hard-of-hearing writers in both syntax and semantics and those of their normally hearing peers. Additionally, age-trend analysis demonstrated significant linear and quadratic age differences for syntactic measures but only quadratic age differences for the semantic measures. This finding indicates the possibility of different developmental trends for syntax and semantics.

Note: Article YoshinagaItano C, Univ Colorado, Commun Disorders Speech Sci Dept, Boulder,CO 80309 USA

Keyword(s): LANGUAGE-DISORDERED CHILDREN; IMPAIRED CHILDREN; NARRATIVE DISCOURSE; STORY GENERATION; COMPREHENSION

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