Information processing of visually presented picture and word stimuli by young hearing-impaired and normal-hearing children.
Eleven hearing-impaired children and 11 normal-hearing children (mean = four years 11 months) were visually presented familiar items in either picture or word form. Subjects were asked to recognize the stimuli they had seen from cue cards consisting of pictures or words. They were then asked to recall the sequence of stimuli by arranging the cue cards selected. The hearing-impaired group and normal-hearing subjects performed differently with the picture/picture (P/P) and word/word (W/W) modes in the recognition phase. The hearing impaired performed equally well with both modes (P/P and W/W), while the normal hearing did significantly better on the P/P mode. Furthermore, the normal-hearing group showed no difference in processing like modes (P/P and W/W) when compared to unlike modes (W/P and P/W). In contrast, the hearing-impaired subjects did better on like modes. The results were interpreted, in part, as supporting the position that young normal-hearing children dual code their visual information better than hearing-impaired children.
D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition; D003638:Deafness; D006801:Humans; D008606:Mental Processes; D011939:Mental Recall; D011581:Psychological Tests; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014796:Visual Perception