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Comparing deaf and hearing college students' mental arithmetic calculations under two interference conditions
Stacey M Davis1, Ronald R Kelly
1Department of Research, Center for Research, Teaching, and Learning, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA.
American Annals of the Deaf
|October 25, 2003
Summary
Deaf students with higher reading skills performed similarly to hearing students on addition tasks, but lower deaf readers struggled with both addition and multiplication accuracy and reaction times.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Educational Psychology
- Linguistics
Background:
- Cognitive processing in deaf individuals can be influenced by reading ability.
- Reaction times (RTs) are a key metric for assessing cognitive task performance.
- Understanding differences in cognitive task performance between deaf and hearing students is crucial for educational support.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare the mental calculation performance of deaf and hearing college students.
- To investigate the impact of reading ability on deaf students' cognitive performance.
- To examine the effects of different interference modes (voicing vs. manual tapping) on reaction times.
Main Methods:
- Participants included deaf and hearing college students.
- A mental calculation task involving verification of addition and multiplication problems was used.
- Reaction times and accuracy were measured under two interference conditions: voicing and manual tapping.
Main Results:
- Higher deaf readers and hearing students exhibited similar RTs and accuracy on addition, with slower RTs in voicing interference.
- Lower deaf readers showed no difference in RTs between interference modes and had lower performance and accuracy overall.
- All participants demonstrated a greater RT effect for manual tapping on multiplication problems, with lower deaf readers being significantly less accurate.
Conclusions:
- Reading proficiency significantly impacts cognitive task performance in deaf individuals.
- Deaf students with lower reading skills face greater challenges in mental calculation tasks.
- Interference modes differentially affect cognitive performance, with implications for designing accessible learning environments.