Deafness & Visual Memory

Hawraa Al-Romani

Zainab Hamadi

SLP Department

2014-2015

Visual memory:

Visual memory is the ability to recall information that has been presented

visually; for immediate recall (4-5 seconds) all of the details of a visual item

and being able to find this from a selection of items.

This involves being able to hold a mental picture of a sequence of letters,

numbers, words, objects, shapes etc.

Problems in this area may mean difficulties with remembering the correct

sequences of letters which make up words or sentences.

Blair’s study by far is the most frequent cited investigation in this area.

His results are summarized in table 8-1

Blair’s (1957) comprehensive study of visual memory

in deaf children

Hypothesis: was that he would find evidence of sensory compensation in the deaf children.

Deaf children were expected to have augmented Visio-spatial abilities leading to better visual short

term memory performance than their hearing age mates, a finding earlier reported by (Mott 1899).

The study involved

53 profoundly deaf children

Ages from 7;6 to 12;6

Group of hearing children

Same ages, nonverbal IQ as deaf

Blair reported that deaf children’s performance significantly surpassed that of

their hearing peers only on the knox cube test and the memory for designs test.

the experimenter taps a sequence on a set of four small cubes, and the child attempts to reproduce the sequence.

• Knot cube test

involves a series of 13 individual geometric figures, each one viewed for 2 seconds before the subject is asked to draw it.

• Memory for designs test

Blair's findings on all four of the memory span tasks the hearing controls scored

significantly higher than the deaf students.

Blair argued that visual memory does not differ in deaf (compared to hearing)

children, but that deaf children are inferior on “abstract” or “conceptual” tasks.

Because he assumed that memory span “involves the mental integration of a

series of different yet related units into a meaningful sequence… so that the

sequence could be accurately reproduced… which is an abstract type of mental

process”, whereas the other tasks involved visual perceptual acts.

The children with hearing-impairment scores were significantly higher on the

non-word recall task than the "real" word recall task.

They also exhibited significantly higher scores on visual working memory

than those of the age-matched sample from the standardized memory

assessment.

Deaf children are good at:

What affects the performance of the deaf ?

What mainly affects the performance of the deaf with respect to normal

hearing children is the type of task employed in the visual memory studies.

Difficulties for subjects who are deaf or hard of hearing often arise with

stimuli that promote verbal coding of information, which can include

nameable objects, numbers and tasks requiring serial order memory

On a test of visual memory requiring subjects to draw one or more geometric

figures from memory, found no main effect or interaction between children who

were deaf or hard of hearing and those with typical hearing.

In contrast, when these same subjects were shown cards displaying a sequence of

digits—stimuli which lend themselves to verbal coding—and then required to

reproduce the sequence on a piece of paper, the results revealed a significantly

shorter memory span by the deaf or hard of hearing subjects.

Parasnis (1996):

Results from these studies point to a possible failure to employ a verbal rehearsal

strategy to aid the memory process.

the nature of visual stimuli seemed to affect performance by subjects who were deaf or

hard of hearing, with verbal stimuli being remembered less readily.

Similar results emerged in a study of adults who were deaf and who had typical hearing,

all of whom were fluent users of Australian Sign Language. The group with typical

hearing performed significantly better on both free and serial recall tasks with verbal

stimuli presented as written words or signs.

Australian Study:

Result: Since the stimulus items could readily be coded as verbal

representations in memory, it is likely that the group with typical hearing

employed a speech-based rehearsal strategy.

Assessed short-term memory abilities along with receptive language abilities of

cochlear implant users and found that children using cochlear implants performed

more poorly than typically hearing peers on a picture sequence memory (leads

to verbal coding) task but not on a visual memory task requiring the imitation

of hand movements.

Dawson (2002):

Deaf

Linguistic deficiency

Poorer performance by subjects who were deaf or hard of hearing on sequential sequencing tasks.

Normal hearing

Normal development of language development

More experience with sequentially presented materials

Better performance on the successive sequencing task.

Results: enhanced memory performance for shapes in signers results from visual skills acquired

through sign language use and deafness, irrespective of language background, leads to the use of

a visually based strategy for memory of difficult-to-describe items.

40 Deaf

Signers Non- signers

51 Hearing

Signers Non- signers

Visual memory for shapes: in deaf (signers and non-signers)

& hearing (signers and non-signers).

Signing individuals were more accurate than non signing at memorizing shapes

In Conclusion:

a. Blair: deaf children are good at tasks that involve visual perceptual acts whereas they are

relatively weak in memory span that involve abstract type of mental process.

b. The deaf are better at: visual working memory and non-word recall

c. Parasnis (1996): Stimuli that promote verbal coding of affects the performance of the deaf

negatively

d. Australian Study: Normal people verbal-rehearsal strategy to aid the memory process (deaf

fail to do it)

e. Dawson (2002): typical hearing employed a speech-based rehearsal strategy to aid the memory

process.

f. Sign language leads leads to the use of a visually based strategy for memory of difficult-to-

describe items.

References:

• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17201534

• http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1958-01952-001

• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24803399

• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0887617707000200

• http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/population/populat.htm

• Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship,

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, January 2011 The Effects of Visuospatial

Sequence Training with Children who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing.