The effects of manual interference and reading level on deaf subjects' recall of word lists

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study examined the effect of a manual interference task on deaf and hearing college students' written free recall under both immediate- and delayed-recall conditions. The stimuli consisted of printed English words that varied on signability (i.e., words that could be expressed by a single sign) and visual imagery. The manual interference task had a small adverse effect on the deaf students' recall, but this effect did not appear to be related to the use of a kinesthetic sign-based coding strategy. It was also found than the deaf subjects' reading levels were very strongly related to their level of word recall; the better deaf readers recalled more than 50% more words than the poorer readers. Ratings of the deaf subjects' speech intelligibility, however, were not related to their level of word recall.