LANGUAGE AND COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY IN DEAF CHILDREN

将考察聋儿的认知和语言灵活性 通过调查他们的生产和理解能力 比喻语言结构。 在听力正常的儿童中，这些技能 已经证明需要元语言知识， 不同元素之间的抽象关系，以及 一个概念领域到另一个：所有的技能，聋哑儿童是 据报道，缺乏。 然而，对聋哑儿童这些技能的评估， 是相当有偏见的，因为他们通常需要一些能力， 英语（通常是第二语言）。 聋哑儿童因此可能有 语言和认知能力与听力相当 同行，但质量不同（往往未开发）的美德，他们的 依赖于视觉空间而不是听觉语言模式， 通信 因此，本研究将调查 这些能力在手语中，并将它们与类似的 听力儿童的英语能力测试。 在几个生产 研究，孩子们会创造故事，以新颖的主题。 这些将是 分析了非字面意义的创造性结构的数量和类型。 理解研究将检查聋哑儿童的解释能力， 选择英语样和/或符号比喻的解释 建筑。 其中主要的变量将是年龄，听力 身份、英语流利程度和父母听力状况。 这个项目是 旨在阐明语言和认知之间的关系 聋儿相关能力的评价 “文化公平”测试。 因此，结果将提供双方的信息 具有一定的理论和应用价值。

The cognitive and language flexibility of deaf children will be examined through the investigation of their abilities to produce and comprehend figurative language constructions. In hearing children, these skills have been shown to require meta-linguistic knowledge, the ability to see abstract relationships among diverse elements, and non-literal mapping of one conceptual domain onto another: all skills that deaf children are reported to lack. Assessment of these skills in deaf children, however, are rather biased insofar as they usually require some competence in English (usually their second language). Deaf children thus may have linguistic and cognitive capabilities comparable to those of their hearing peers, but qualitatively different (and often untapped) by virture of their reliance on a visuo-spatial rather than an acoustic-verbal mode of communication. This research therefore will investigate the extent of these abilities within sign language and compare them to the similar abilities of hearing children tested in English. In several production studies, children will create stories to novel themes. These will be analyzed for the quantity and type of non-literal, creative constructions. Comprehension studies will examine the deaf child's ability to interpret or select interpretations of English-like and/or signed figurative constructions. Among the major variables of interest will be age, hearing status, English fluency, and parental hearing status. This project is intended to clarify the relationship between language and cognitive development by evaluating related abilities of the deaf child in "culture-fair" testing. Results thus will provide information of both theoretical and applied value in several areas.