Convertino Carol, Borgna Georgianna, Marschark Marc, Durkin Andreana
National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology.
J Deaf Stud Deaf Educ. 2014 Oct;19(4):471-83. doi: 10.1093/deafed/enu024. Epub 2014 Aug 21.
Deaf learners frequently demonstrate significantly less vocabulary knowledge than hearing age-mates. Studies involving other domains of knowledge, and perhaps deaf learners' academic performance, indicate similar lags with regard to world knowledge. Such gaps often are attributed to limitations on deaf children's incidental learning by virtue of not having access to the conversations of others. Cochlear implants (CIs) have been described as providing such access, and rapid growth in vocabularies following pediatric cochlear implantation has suggested that, over time, children with implants might close the gap relative to hearing peers. Two experiments evaluated this possibility through the assessment of word and world knowledge among deaf college students with and without CIs and a hearing comparison group. Results across essentially all tasks indicated hearing students to outperform deaf students both with and without CIs with no significant differences between the latter two groups. Separate analyses of a subset of implant users who received their implants at a young age did not reveal any long-term advantages, nor was age of implantation related to enhanced performance on any of the tasks. Results are discussed in terms of incidental learning and the accessibility of word and world knowledge to deaf learners with and without CIs.
聋人学习者的词汇知识往往明显少于同龄听力正常的人。涉及其他知识领域以及可能涉及聋人学习者学业成绩的研究表明，在世界知识方面也存在类似的滞后情况。这种差距通常归因于聋童由于无法参与他人的对话而在附带学习方面存在局限。人工耳蜗（CI）被认为可以提供这样的机会，并且小儿人工耳蜗植入后词汇量的快速增长表明，随着时间的推移，植入人工耳蜗的儿童可能会缩小与听力正常同龄人之间的差距。两项实验通过评估有和没有人工耳蜗的聋人大学生以及一个听力正常的对照组的单词和世界知识，对这种可能性进行了评估。几乎所有任务的结果都表明，听力正常的学生在有和没有人工耳蜗的情况下都比聋人学生表现更好，而后两组之间没有显著差异。对一小部分幼年时接受人工耳蜗植入的使用者进行的单独分析没有发现任何长期优势，植入年龄与任何任务的表现提升也没有关系。本文从附带学习以及有和没有人工耳蜗的聋人学习者获取单词和世界知识的角度对研究结果进行了讨论。
