Effect of syntactic order on serial-recall performance of hearing-impaired and normal-hearing subjects

Previous research on the effect of syntactic order on the memory performance of hearing-impaired subjects has indicated that in contrast to normal-hearing subjects the deaf do not make use of the syntactic order of a word string to facilitate retention and recall. The present study used an immediate serial recall paradigm rather than a paired associate paradigm requiring longer term retention. Using this paradigm, 10 normal-hearing, 10 hearing-impaired subjects trained with manual communication, and 10 hearing-impaired trained with oral communication were presented with word strings of four, six, and eight words in length. One set of word strings was syntactically well formed while another was randomly ordered. The subjects were presented the stimuli over nine trials. An analysis of the number of errors for each list length and order condition revealed facilitation due to syntactic order at the eight-word length for all subjects and at the six-word length for the hearing-impaired populations. An error analysis further supported the use of syntactic order by the hearing impaired to facilitate their retention of the word strings. Two ways of resolving the conflict between these results and prior results showing no facilitation are presented. The first recognizes the possible use of an order of mention strategy and its effect upon performance in these two studies. The second notes the differences in the involvement of semantic versus syntactic information in the tasks used in these studies.