LANGUAGE AND COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY IN DEAF CHILDREN

将考察聋儿的认知和语言灵活性 通过对他们产生和理解能力的调查 比喻的语言结构。在倾听儿童听力方面，这些技能具有 被证明需要元语言知识，能够看清 不同元素之间的抽象关系，以及 从一个概念领域到另一个概念领域：聋哑儿童的所有技能 据报道缺乏。然而，对失聪儿童的这些技能的评估， 是相当有偏见的，因为他们通常需要一些能力 英语(通常是他们的第二语言)。因此，聋哑儿童可能会有 语言和认知能力与他们的听力相当 同龄人，但在性质上不同(通常未被利用)的优点 依赖于视觉-空间而不是听觉-言语模式 沟通。因此，这项研究将调查 手语中的这些能力，并将它们与类似的 用英语测试儿童听力的能力。在几部作品中 学习时，孩子们会创作出以新奇为主题的故事。这些将是 分析了非文字性、创造性构式的数量和类型。 理解研究将考察失聪儿童的解释能力或 类英语和/或带符号比喻的精选释义 建筑。感兴趣的主要变量包括年龄、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 年聋儿相关能力评价的发展研究 “文化公平”测试。因此，结果将提供这两个方面的信息 在几个领域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.