The purpose of the study was to ascertain the similarities and differences on measures for divergent production between groups representing hearing and deaf children in Western Canada. Divergent production was defined as the generation of ideas from given information. There are four measurable factors within divergent production: fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration; i.e. the number of ideas, their classes, statistical unusualness, and embellishments. The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking, Figural Form B, was chosen as the instrument because it measures the four divergent production factors, and requires non-verbal responses. The regular test instructions were modified by the researcher to a non-verbal form in order to facilitate administration of the instrument to both deaf and hearing subjects. The study was in two phases. Phase 1, the Pilot Study, was designed to trial test the modified protocols, and Phase 2, the Main Study, to compare the deaf and hearing subjects. The Pilot Study data was analyzed by univariate and multivariate F-tests and by discriminant analysis (Tatsuoka 1970) for protocol and sex effects, and the Main Study data by univariate and multivariate F-tests for hearing status and sex effects, discriminant analysis for the statistically significant F-tests, and Hotelling’s T² routine for the within grade effects. For both phases an α level of .05 was chosen. The Pilot Study, employing a randomly split class of 66 pupils, revealed a high possible educative effect by the modified protocols. However, the modified protocols were used in the Main Study since both groups of 114 hearing and 114 deaf subjects observed the same instructions and used the same test instrument. The results of the Main Study showed the hearing subjects to be statistically different from the deaf subjects on a composite factor of the four divergent production factors with a multivariate F-value of 4.555 and an associated probability of .001 on a two-tailed test. Hearing boys were also statistically different from hearing girls with an F-value of 2.764 and an associated probability of .029. The univariate F-tests reached statistical significance for only figural flexibility and originality on the comparison of the hearing and deaf subjects. Discriminant analysis revealed that the underlying differences amongst the dependent figural factors was at the flexibility end on a figural fluency/flexibility discriminant dimension. None of the other comparisons by hearing status, sex, and within grade effects reached statistical significance. However, grade by grade developmental patterns and boy or girl dominance on individual figural factors compared favourably with other studies. Boys tended to score higher than girls on figural originality, and girls higher on figural elaboration. By grade, the hearing subjects exhibited the characteristic "Grade Four Slump" but the deaf subjects did not. The only major difference between these results and those of Kaltsounis (19 70) was on the comparison of hearing and deaf subjects. Kaltsounis found his deaf subjects to be significantly superior at the .01 level on a two-tailed test whereas in this study the hearing subjects were superior at the .05 level (computed p < .001) also on a two-tailed test. The researcher noted several possible causes of the above major difference suggesting that in this study biases in the modified protocols may have favoured the hearing subjects, and in Kaltsounis' study biases in the ordinary protocols may have favoured the deaf subjects. Finally, questions were posed enquiring into the importance of divergent production in the education of the deaf. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

This study attempted to determine whether or not there was a difference in the physical fitness or in the developmental change of physical fitness between deaf and hearing children. Five deaf subjects of each sex were randomly chosen from each age group (7, 9, 11, 13, and 15) from the deaf population who had no major physical or health difficulties at Jericho Hill School for the Deaf, Vancouver, B.C. Hearing subjects (10 in each age group and sex for statistical purposes) represented the population of general Canadian school-age children who did not have any major physical or health defects. Deaf subjects were administered the CAHPER Fitness-Performance Test which is composed of 6 tests (one minute speed sit-ups, shuttle run, standing broad jump, flexed arm hang, 50 yard run, and 300 yard run) and the CAHPER Physical Work Capacity Test. The results indicated no significant difference between the deaf and hearing in over all physical fitness with the exception of sit-ups and shuttle run nor in the developmental change of physical fitness. The deaf children were superior in the sit-ups but inferior in the shuttle run as compared with hearing children. Possible causes of these differences were discussed. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Dissertation (MA (Communication Pathology))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology / unrestricted

This dissertation comprised three studies investigating early language and reading development of children with hearing loss who used listening and spoken language. The first study examined conversation techniques used by parents during dinnertimes at home with their preschool children with hearing loss (N = 37). Twenty-minute dinnertime segments were extracted from daylong, naturalistic Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) recordings. Transcripts were coded for parents’ use of open- and closed-ended language elicitation, reformulation, imitation, directives, and explicit instruction in vocabulary and grammar. Participants’ receptive vocabulary and knowledge of basic concepts were also measured. Parents’ use of conversation techniques varied widely, with closed-ended elicitations and directives used most frequently during dinner. Open-ended language elicitation related significantly to children’s receptive vocabulary, and explicit vocabulary instruction was correlated with basic-concepts skills. Thematic analysis found common themes of concrete conversation topics and sibling speakers. In addition, parents who used many techniques often introduced abstract conversation topics; electronic media was present in all conversations with few techniques. The second study investigated the longitudinal complexity and quantity of the language input and output of 14 preschool children with hearing loss. Participants’ receptive vocabulary and understanding of basic concepts were measured and daylong recordings were collected at two time points one year apart. Twenty-minute dinnertime segments were extracted from each recording, and adults’ and children’s utterances were coded for syntactic and clausal complexity and lexical diversity. The quantity and complexity of parental language input remained consistent over one year. The initial clausal complexity of the children’s utterances related to their general receptive vocabulary, while the initial syntactic complexity of the children’s utterances related to their understanding of basic concepts one year later. The third study explored the reading skills achieved by 64 children with hearing loss in prekindergarten through third grade. Participants’ mean scores on eight reading subtests of the Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Achievement were all within one standard deviation of the tests’ normative means. Relative strengths were found in basic reading skills, including phonological awareness and spelling. Relative weaknesses were found in oral reading and word- and sentence-reading fluency. When 53 participants’ skills were measured one year later, they had made significant gains in letter-word identification, sentence-reading fluency, and word-reading fluency, suggesting that they had made more than one year’s progress in one year’s time while enrolled in a specialized program.

Prepositions are important for the syntactical structure of the sentence and also to relate meaning, particularly meaning associated with concepts of place and time (Washington and Naremore, 1978). Expressive acquisition of function words, including prepositions, is significantly delayed in the hearing impaired population (Cooper and Rosenstein, 1966). Yet, acquisition sequence for expressive prepositions has not been determined for this population. The purpose of this study was to investigate the oral expressive acquisition of locative and directional single word prepositions in severely-to-profoundly hearing impaired children. The question this study sought to answer was: At what age levels are seventeen locative and directional single word prepositions expressively acquired by severely- to-profoundly hearing impaired children?

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