Chen Lilan, Wang Yan, Wen Hongbo
School of Psychology, Hainan Normal University, Haikou, China.
Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Front Psychol. 2021 Mar 25;12:584183. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.584183. eCollection 2021.
Although most deaf individuals could use sign language or sign/spoken language mix, hearing loss would still affect their language acquisition. Compensatory plasticity holds that the lack of auditory stimulation experienced by deaf individuals, such as congenital deafness, can be met by enhancements in visual cognition. And the studies of hearing individuals have showed that visual form perception is the cognitive mechanism that could explain the association between numerical magnitude processing and arithmetic computation. Therefore, we examined numerical magnitude processing and its contribution to arithmetical ability in deaf adolescents, and explored the differences between the congenital and acquired deafness. 112 deaf adolescents (58 congenital deafness) and 58 hearing adolescents performed a series of cognitive and mathematical tests, and it was found there was no significant differences between the congenital group and the hearing group, but congenital group outperformed acquired group in numerical magnitude processing (reaction time) and arithmetic computation. It was also found there was a close association between numerical magnitude processing and arithmetic computation in all deaf adolescents, and after controlling for the demographic variables (age, gender, onset of hearing loss) and general cognitive abilities (non-verbal IQ, processing speed, reading comprehension), numerical magnitude processing could predict arithmetic computation in all deaf adolescents but not in congenital group. The role of numerical magnitude processing (symbolic and non-symbolic) in deaf adolescents' mathematical performance should be paid attention in the training of arithmetical ability.
尽管大多数聋人可以使用手语或手语/口语混合方式，但听力损失仍会影响他们的语言习得。代偿性可塑性认为，聋人所经历的听觉刺激缺失，如先天性耳聋，可以通过视觉认知的增强来弥补。对听力正常个体的研究表明，视觉形式感知是一种认知机制，能够解释数字大小处理与算术运算之间的关联。因此，我们研究了聋青少年的数字大小处理及其对算术能力的贡献，并探讨了先天性耳聋和后天性耳聋之间的差异。112名聋青少年（58名先天性耳聋）和58名听力正常青少年进行了一系列认知和数学测试，结果发现先天性耳聋组与听力正常组之间没有显著差异，但先天性耳聋组在数字大小处理（反应时间）和算术运算方面优于后天性耳聋组。研究还发现，在所有聋青少年中，数字大小处理与算术运算之间存在密切关联，在控制了人口统计学变量（年龄、性别、听力损失 onset）和一般认知能力（非言语智商、处理速度、阅读理解）后，数字大小处理能够预测所有聋青少年的算术运算，但先天性耳聋组除外。在算术能力训练中，应关注数字大小处理（符号性和非符号性）在聋青少年数学表现中的作用。
