Learning Disability, Neuropsychology, and Deaf Youth: Theory ...

Introduction
Learning Disability, Neuropsychology, and Deaf Youth:
Theory, Research, and Practice
Rosemary Calderon
Children's Hospital and Medical Center
University of Washington
Historically, there have been a variety of perspectives
regarding the impact of deafness on the development
of intellect, learning, and brain organization in prelingually
deaf children. In 1960, for example, Myklebust
proposed that auditory or any odier sensory deprivation
leads to limitations on deaf people's experience
and thus deprives them of information critical for normal
psychological functioning. In his view, the absence
of sensation alters the integration of information and
the functioning of other abilities, thus leading to a
differently constituted experience. Such alterations'
were seen as occurring naturally and unknowingly,
affecting deaf people's perception, conception, imagination,
and thought.
Myklebust's perspective unfortunately was linked
to a broader view of deaf people as not only different
but also cognitively deficient relative to hearing people.
In a large number of studies, deaf and hearing subjects
were compared on measures designed for and normed
on hearing populations without consideration of communication
needs or the possible effects of early language
deprivation in hearing households. While deaf
people as a group often did score lower on such measures,
there were multiple confounding factors that
could have explained the differences without having to
assume any inherent deficiencies in the deaf populations'
intellectual or cognitive functioning (Greenberg
& Kusche, 1989). Deaf people, in fact, have been
Correspondence should be sent to Rosenwy Calderon, Children's Hospital
and Medical Center, University of Washington, P.O. Box 5371, Seattle,
WA 98105-0371.
Copyright C 1998 Oxford University Press. CCC 108M159
found to yield the same distribution of intelligence
scores as hearing people on tests in which language
skills are less directly integral to die success or failure
of die task (Sisco & Anderson, 1978). Deafness, per se,
does not make one "deficient."
In the 1970s, there was a shift in the conceptualization
of deaf children's development. Furth's (1973) and
others' investigations with deaf and hearing children
on generally "language free" Piagetian cognitive tasks
demonstrated that deaf children either performed as
well as hearing peers or made significant gains over
time, eventually comparing well with diem. Such results,
along widi controversies surrounding earlier research
and biased assumptions about deaf people, led
to a move away from a deficiency model of deafness. Instead,
investigators came to recognize diat the nature
of cognitive development is essentially die same for
deaf and hearing children, allowing that slight developmental
delays or differences may result from secondary
effects of deafness (e.g., communication abilities, environmental
factors) (Marschark, 1993).
While the deficiency model is not very useful in
understanding differences between hearing and deaf
people, more recent, better conceptualized research
and increased understanding and sensitivity to assessment
biases have provided documentation that differences
do exist between deaf and hearing populations
(Wolff, Kammerer, Gardner, & Thatcher, 1989). Results
demonstrate that deaf people possess superior
skills in some areas, and hearing people perform better
in others (Wolff et. al., 1989). Differences between the
populations are also evident in studies of brain organi-
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2 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 3:1 Winter 1998
zation, localization of language functioning, visual perception
of language, and compensatory cognitive functioning
as a function of sensory deprivation (Bellugi,
Poizner, & Klima, 1989; Corina, Vaid, & Bellugi, 1992;
Neville, 1990; Wolff & Thatcher, 1990). Thus, there
appears to be clear evidence that hearing and deaf
people do perceive and interpret their world experiences
somewhat differently. What is less clear is how
these differences affect deaf children's development and
what implications they may have for promoting deaf
children's optimal achievement.
Perhaps not surprisingly, changes in views of cognitive
functioning among deaf people have been accompanied
by changes in how deaf children are educated.
Instructional methods thus have undergone
significant transformation over the last 25 years, moving
from the widely-accepted oralist approach in which
children were taught in and required to learn only spoken
language to the "revolution" of Total Communication
(TC), which combined spoken language, sign
language, and sound amplification. The TC approach
to education has led to some improvement over oral
approaches, resulting in moderate increases in academic
achievement and language scores (as well as social
adjustment) among deaf children. However, their
achievement scores continue to lag behind those of
hearing children (Moores, 1987).
The continued depression of achievement in deaf
students is of serious concern to all educators and professionals
in the field of deafness. It raises multiple
questions and concerns not only regarding the ability
to find appropriate teaching methods for deaf children
but also how we can identify those students who may
be falling behind in school because they have additional
learning problems—learning problems that are undetected,
unaddressed, and possibly unrelated to children's
hearing losses and possible language deprivation.
However, the possibility of a dual classification for
any particular child as deaf or hard of hearing and as
learning-disabled has generally been discounted. The
operational definition for learning disabilities adopted
in PL 94-142, in particular, excludes children with sensory
impairments, the implication being that all learning
problems of deaf students can be attributed to their
hearing loss without the need to refer to other factors
(Bunch & Melnyk, 1989; Mauk & Mauk, 1992, 1993).
This interpretation of the law has greatly frustrated
those committed to meeting the needs of deaf students,
as it is clear to many of us that there are deaf students
with deficits that clearly would be considered learning
disabilities if found in the general hearing population
(Hammill, Leigh, McNutt, & Larsen, 1981; Moores,
1987; Roth, 1991; Sabatino, 1983; Elliot, Powers, &
Funderburg, 1988; Funderburg, 1982).
Whether we like it or not, there is some reason to
expect that deaf children may be at greater risk for
learning disabilities than hearing children. Hearing
loss is often associated with other neurological impairments
(e.g., Paul & Quigley, 1990; Zwierki, Stansberg,
Porter, & Hayes, 1976) that have been shown to be risk
factors for learning problems in hearing children
(Dworkin, 1989). In addition, many deaf children grow
up in environments in which their special needs may
not be attended to during the first, critical years of life.
However, if we were to use the same standard to define
learning disabilities in deaf students as is used with
hearing students (i.e., the two-year discrepancy equation
between IQ_and academic grade achievement), we
would have to classify the majority of deaf children
as learning-disabled by the time they reach midelementary
school. Such overclassification would more
reflect limitations on our assessment tools and understanding
of their skills (LeSasso, 1985, 1992) than their
abilities per se, but then how are we to decide if a deaf
child has learning disabilities or not? For example, how
does one distinguish poor reading skills from a reading
disability in the deaf student?
Assessing learning disabilities in deaf children is
made even more difficult by the paucity of assessment
materials that are truly appropriate for use with them
(Blennerhasset, 1985). Further, the considerable heterogeneity
of the deaf population makes simple categorization
impossible. Hearing loss can derive from a vast
array of etiologies, and its specific cause, time of onset,
degree and frequency of loss, and the nature of early
interventions all can affect the development of audition
as well as other brain structures and functions. Professionals
who work with deaf children thus have few
guidelines within which to pursue greater understanding
of their learning process and the improvement of
relevant educational methods. It is time that professionals
from across the spectrum (i.e., basic science re-
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searchers, theoretical and applied researchers, educators,
and clinicians) come together to develop the
necessary cross-discipline communication that will
move our understanding and knowledge base in the
field of deafness forward.
As one starting point to this exchange, a conference
on Learning Disability, Neuropsychology and Deaf Youth:
Theory, Research, and Practice was held in Seattle, Washington,
in April 1996. The conference was a joint effort
between the Gallaudet University Regional Center in
Fremont, California; the University of Washington;
and Children's Hospital and Medical Center in Seattle,
Washington. The goal was to begin an integration of
behaviorial, neuropsychological, and educational evidence
regarding learning and learning disabilities with
an eye toward doing a better job of educating deaf
youth. The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education
was founded to serve a similar integrative function, and
it seems only proper that the two should come together
on a topic of such importance. This special issue of
JDSDE is a product of that conference and also an indicator
that such a discussion is both necessary and potentially
revolutionary. We offer it here as a guidepost,
or a series of guideposts, and as an invitation. Together,
there are no limits to what we can achieve.
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Introduction 3
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