Effects of Hearing Status and Sign Language Use on Working Memory

• Published in: Journal of deaf studies and deaf education Vol. 21; no. 2; pp. 148 - 155
• Main Authors: Marschark, Marc, Sarchet, Thomastine, Trani, Alexandra
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Oxford University Press 01.04.2016; Oxford Publishing Limited (England)
• Subjects: Cognitive Ability; Correlation; Deaf Interpreting; Deafness; EMPIRICAL MANUSCRIPT; Hearing (Physiology); Hearing Loss - psychology; Humans; Language Usage; Learning Modalities; Memory; Memory, Short-Term - physiology; Oral Language; Persons With Hearing Impairments - psychology; Short Term Memory; Sign Language; Spatial Ability; Stimuli; Students with disabilities; Task Analysis; Verbal Stimuli; Visual Stimuli
• ISSN: 1081-4159; 1465-7325
• DOI: 10.1093/deafed/env070

Deaf individuals have been found to score lower than hearing individuals across a variety of memory tasks involving both verbal and nonverbal stimuli, particularly those requiring retention of serial order. Deaf individuals who are native signers, meanwhile, have been found to score higher on visual-spatial memory tasks than on verbal-sequential tasks and higher on some visual-spatial tasks than hearing nonsigners. However, hearing status and preferred language modality (signed or spoken) frequently are confounded in such studies. That situation is resolved in the present study by including deaf students who use spoken language and sign language interpreting students (hearing signers) as well as deaf signers and hearing nonsigners. Three complex memory span tasks revealed overall advantages for hearing signers and nonsigners over both deaf signers and deaf nonsigners on 2 tasks involving memory for verbal stimuli (letters). There were no differences among the groups on the task involving visual-spatial stimuli. The results are consistent with and extend recent findings concerning the effects of hearing status and language on memory and are discussed in terms of language modality, hearing status, and cognitive abilities among deaf and hearing individuals.