This study was conducted to investigate change (as measured by positive growth changes in total personality adjustment, social maturity, and behavior patterns) in pre-school deaf children with behavioral problems who experienced short-term, nondirective play therapy. Change in behavior of these children was also investigated ten weeks after therapy.

Mentally retarded children demonstrate an abnormally high incidence of hearing impairment, and many, particularly those with IQs below 40, are difficult for audiologists to test. Consequently, there is great need among this population for investigating response modes and conditioning of responses to auditory stimuli. A review of the literature reveals no studies of echoic vocalization as a conditioned response mode to pure tone stimuli among the retarded. In this study, a heterogenous sample of 13 moderately and severely retarded children ranging in age from 7 years 7 months to 16 years 3 months were compared on two response modes to suprathreshold pure tone signals of 500 and 4000 Hz: (1) dropping poker chips, and (2) echoic vocalization (EVR). All subjects received both treatments but were divided into Groups A and B, the former receiving Treatment One (object dropping) first, the latter receiving Treatment Two (EVR) first. Operant procedures combined social and tangible reinforcement in each treatment to achieve stimulus control without specific verbal instructions. EVR included two unusual stages: (1) conditioning of imitations to the experimenter’s vocalizations, usually /a/ and (2) conditioning of response transfer from vocal to pure tone stimuli. Acquisition and extinction to first 500, then 4000 Hz proceeded sequentially within each treatment. Acquisition criterion for vocal and pure tone stimuli was eight consecutive responses. Extinction criterion was failure to respond to six out of eight tonal stimuli following withdrawal of reinforcement. Eleven of the 13 children achieved acquisition criterion for both response modes, with only three of the older subjects encountering substantial difficulty in response transfer in Treatment Two. Differences in acquisition data between treatments were not significant. Three times as much extinction occurred with EVR in Treatment Two than with object dropping in Treatment One, but there was a tendency toward more false responses in the latter mode. Otherwise, data up to achievement of extinction criterion in the extinction phases did not differ significantly between treatments Order of presentation of treatment and frequency of the pure tone stimuli were not significant factors in the results. It was concluded that despite substantially greater occurrence of extinction following withdrawal of reinforcement as compared with object dropping, echoic vocalization response has been shown to be an effective, practical response mode to suprathreshold pure tone stimuli among the children in this sample. It was recommended that further investigation with EVR be directed toward: (1) the feasibility of eliminating response transfer by use of verbal assistance and direct conditioning of EVR to pure tones; (2) if response transfer is necessary, comparison of older and younger retardates on that procedure; (3) the possibility of increasing resistance to extinction in EVR through visual reinforcement; (4) comparison of EVR and object dropping on threshold determination among MR children; (5) the practicability of paring EVR and object dropping response modes; and (6) investigation of other forms of both breath expulsion and breath inspiration as response modes to pure tone stimuli among mentally retarded children.

This paper provides a brief history of attitudes toward the deaf and the evolution of teaching and instruction of the deaf. It then discusses a pilot study that probed the acquisition of lip reading skills and the influence of mothers in the process.

Thesis (M.(Augmentative and Alternative Communication))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

This study examines the effects of maternal teaching style on the developing problem-solving abilities of deaf and hearing preschool children. Mothers and children from three matched groups, hearing mother-deaf child, hearing mother-hearing child, and deaf mother-deaf child, were videotaped while the mother taught the child to construct a small pyramid from 21 interlocking blocks and again when the child attempted the task independently. The tapes were coded and analyzed to examine maternal instructional style and subsequent independent child performance. The mothers in the deaf mother-deaf child and hearing mother-hearing child dyads used appropriate scaffolding behavior significantly more often than the other mothers; their children were significantly more adept and independent problem-solvers than the deaf children of hearing mothers. The more contingent the mother's instructions, the more independent and successful child. Scaffolding is discussed in terms of its benefits for instructing deaf children.

In this investigation three groups of ten subjects each, ages seven to nine, were compared on common object picture span identification tasks to determine if the rehearsal strategies of oral labeling, signing, or total communication significantly effected their visual memory. Thethree groups consisted of a good learner/normal hearing (NH) group, a hearing impaired poor speechreader/learning disabled (LD) group, and a hearing impaired good learner/good speechreader total communication (TC) group.Subjects' picture span identification performances with and without rehearsal were compared by a one way ANOVA for difference scores. The F value of 62.026 was significant at the .01 level which demonstrated a significant difference among the groups' difference scores. Statistical results between groups indicated that the signing rehearsal strategy significantly improved the LD group's scores on the rehearsed picture span taskas compared to the oral labeling and total communication rehearsal strategies of the NH and IC groups whose rehearsal had little effect on their performance.In summary, this study showed that poor learners/poor speechreaders greatly benefitted from overt rehearsal strategies on a visual memory picture identification task.

The major purpose of this study was to determine the effect of two mediational strategies, labeling and rehearsal, on the short-term memory of prelingual deaf children. The research question answered by this investigation examined whether inducing the use of a mediator was affected by age and the serial position of stimulus items presented.The population of prelingual, severely and profoundly deaf children of normal intelligence were screened for overt production of existing mediational techniques. Thirty-three nonproducing subjects were randomly assigned to three treatment groups at four age levels. Two groups were taught memory strategies, and the third group acted as a control. A single null hypothesis was tested using a 3x4x4 analysis of variance with repeated measures on the last factor. The .05 level of significance was predetermined as the critical probability level for rejecting the hypothesis.FINDINGS1. Differences in recall performance of prelingual deaf children who (a) were induced to label, (b) were induced to cumulatively rehearse, and (c) had no induced strategy did not vary as a function of age and serial position.2. Deaf children's performance on short-term, visual sequential memory tasks is a function of the type of preferred memory strategy and age.3. No differences in performance at the serial positions occurred as a function of age.4. The type of memory strategy used by prelingual deaf children did not result in differences in performance as a function of serial position.5. The youngest deaf children who rehearsed and labeled enhanced recall significantly better than those children who were taught no strategy.6. Most older subjects taught to rehearse recalled significantly better than the children taught to label and those who were not taught a memory technique.7. Late intermediate deaf children who rehearsed recalled better than those children taught to label, but not significantly different from those taught no strategy.8. The relationship among serial position levels showed primacy and recency effects on the memory curve.CONCLUSIONS1. The cognitive processes used by deaf children are similar to those used by hearing children.2. Cognitive processes used by deaf children are utilized for similar purposes as those used by hearing children.3. Deaf children appear to display a production deficiency with regard to the use of mediational strategies. / Department of Special Education

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DX211789.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1969. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Ann M. Mulholland. Dissertation Committee: Frances P. Connor. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-108).