4. memory skills of deaf learners implications and applications

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MEMORY SKILLS OF DEAF LEARNERS:IMPLICATIONS AND APPLICATIONS

Some psychologists consider workingmemory (WM) and short-term mem-ory (STM) to be synonymous, and torepresent a memory store that is con-strained both by the number of itemsthat can be maintained and the lengthof time these items can be active.Denh (2008), however, makes this dis-tinction between STM and WM: STMpassively holds information. WM ac-tively processes it.Research over the past two decades

has demonstrated that performanceon WM and STM tasks is highly predic-tive of academic achievement in areassuch as

• reading (Cain, 2006; Cain & Oak -hill, 2006)

• language comprehension (Engle,Carullo, & Collins, 1991)

• mathematics (Geary, Hoard, Nu-gent, & Byrd-Craven, 2007; Jarvis& Gathercole, 2003)

• science (Gathercole & Alloway,2008; Gathercole & Pickering,2000; Gathercole, Pickering,Knight, & Stegmann, 2004; Jarvis& Gathercole, 2003)

Long-term memory, the repository ofknowledge, can acquire very little information unless these two gate-ways are functioning properly (Denh,2008). Deficits in WM and STM poten-tially may limit students’ ability tolearn and function in school (Alloway,Gathercole, Kirkwood, & Elliott, 2009).Although it is not yet well understoodhow WM and STM contribute to aca-demic skills, it has been suggested thatlearning is hampered or fails when task

HE AUTHOR reviews research on working memory and short-term mem-ory abilities of deaf individuals, delineating strengths and weaknesses.Among the areas of weakness that are reviewed are sequential recall, pro-cessing speed, attention, and memory load. Areas of strengths includefree recall, visuospatial recall, imagery, and dual encoding. Phonologicalencoding and rehearsal appear to be strengths when these strategies areemployed. The implications of the strengths and weaknesses for lan-guage learning and educational achievement are discussed. Researchquestions are posed, and remedial and compensatory classroom applica-tions are suggested.

HARLEY HAMILTON

HAMILTON IS SENIOR RESEARCH SCIENTIST,SCHOOL OF INTERACTIVE COMPUTING,GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, ATLANTA.

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demands exceed memory capacity(Ayres, 2009; Gathercole, Lamont, &Alloway, 2006).Deficits in memory processes have

been found in children with disabili-ties (Alloway & Gathercole, 2006; Pick-ering, 2006). For example, childrenwith reading disabilities have specificdifficulties in retrieving speech-basedcodes and monitoring attentionalprocesses (Swanson, Zheng, & Jer-man, 2009). WM deficits have alsobeen described for groups of childrenwho exhibit

• mathematical learning disabili-ties (Geary et al., 2007)

• intellectual disabilities (Henry &Winfield, 2010)

• speech and language impair-ments (Archibald & Gathercole,2006)

• autism (Bennetto, Pennington,& Rogers, 1996)

• attention deficit/hyperactivitydisorder (Rapport et al., 2008)

A greater understanding of mem-ory limitations in children can ulti-mately inform the development ofcommunication and classroom prac-tices and may result in improved lan-guage learning and school outcomes.To date, however, relatively little re-search has been conducted towarddeveloping and evaluating innovativeapproaches that would minimizememory demands in the classroom(Gathercole & Alloway, 2008) or di-rectly improve memory in studentswho are most at risk for communica-tive or academic failure (Holmes,Gathercole, & Dunning, 2009; Kling-berg et al., 2005; Swanson, Kehler, &Jerman, 2010). The low levels of aca-demic achievement common amongdeaf individuals (Gallaudet ResearchInstitute, 1996; Marschark, 2006;Meadow-Orlans, 2001; Moores, 2001,2003; Traxler, 2000) may also have a

basis in memory processes (Blair,1957; Marschark et al., 2009).In the present article, I review re-

search on WM and STM abilities ofdeaf individuals. In this article, deafrefers to those individuals with a hear-ing loss of 70 dB or higher. This reviewfocuses on deaf signing individuals.The areas of memory that are reviewedinclude those in which deaf individualsexhibit deficiencies and strengths. De-ficiencies refer to areas in which deafindividuals perform less well thanhearing individuals, and strengths re-fer to areas in which deaf individualsperform as well as or better than hear-ing individuals. Areas of deficiency in-clude sequential recall, processingspeed, attention, and memory load.Areas of strength include free recall,visuospatial recall, imagery, and dualencoding. Areas that emerge asstrengths when a particular strategy isemployed include phonological en-coding and rehearsal. The implica-tions of the deficiencies and strengthsfor language learning and educationalachievement are discussed. The re-sults of the literature review thenform the basis for suggested remedialand compensatory activities to en-hance learning. Research questionsare also delineated regarding the pro-posed educational applications.

Memory Skills of Deaf LearnersMemory Deficits and TheirEffects on Language Learningand Academic AchievementSequential MemorySequential memory is recall or pro-cessing of a list or other stimulus suchas a sentence in the same order as it was presented. Bebko (1984) hasnoted that deaf individuals havegreater difficulty with sequentialmemory processing tasks than hear-ing individuals. For deaf individualscompared to hearing peers of similar

chronological age, deficits have beenfound in regard to immediate sequen-tial recall of lists of

• digits (Blair, 1957; Flaherty &Moran, 2004; Koo, Crain, LaSasso,& Eden, 2008; Olsson & Furth,1966; Parasnis, Samar, Bettger, &Sathe, 1996; Pintner & Patterson,1917; Tomlinson-Keasey & Smith-Winberry, 1990)

• printed words (Flaherty &Moran, 2004; Hanson, 1982;Krakow & Hanson, 1985)

• pictures (Blair, 1957; Bebko,1984; Bebko & McKinnon, 1990;Campbell & Wright, 1990)

• American Sign Language (ASL)signs (for deaf subjects) versusEnglish words (for hearing sub-jects) (Bavelier, Newport, Hall,Supalla, & Boutla, 2008; Bellugi& Siple, 1974; Bellugi, Klima, &Siple, 1975; Boutla, Supalla, New-port, & Bavelier, 2004 ; Geraci,Gozzi, Papagno, & Cecchetto,2008; Krakow & Hanson, 1985)

• Fingerspelled words (for deafsubjects) versus English words(for hearing subjects) (Krakow &Hanson, 1985)

Various researchers have discussedthe reasons for this deficit. Their hy-potheses include the longer articula-tion length of signs in comparison tospeech (M. Wilson & Emmorey, 1997),the shorter decay rate of visual/signmemory compared to that of echoic/speech-based memory (Boutla et al.,2004), and the formational complexityof signs versus speech (Geraci et al.,2008). Regardless of the theoreticalviewpoint, deaf individuals’ sequen-tially based WM appears to be some-what limited when compared to thatof hearing individuals. A recent review(Marschark & Wauters, 2008) has sug-gested that deaf children are lesslikely than hearing children to use


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sequential processing strategies, andthat this may account for at leastsome of the former’s linguistic WMdeficit and language comprehensiondifficulties.

Processing SpeedProcessing speed is the speed withwhich an individual can perform acognitive task, such as recognizing aword or sign or comprehending a sen-tence. Speed-of-processing deficitshave been found to inhibit the oraland written language as well as themath ability of hearing children(Fletcher, Lyon, Fuchs, & Barnes,2007; Mather, & Jaffe, 2002; Prifitera,Saklofske, & Weiss, 2005). Slow wordrecognition while reading has alsobeen related to deficits in reading flu-ency and comprehension ( Johns,2009; L. Kelly, 1993; Nagy, Anderson,Schommer, Scott, & Stallman, 1989).Results from the processing speed in-dex subtests of the fourth edition ofthe Wechsler Intelligence Scale forChildren (WISC) indicate that deaf stu-dents have processing speed deficits(Leutzinger, 2002; Maller & Ferron,1997). For deaf students, scores on theWISC processing speed index subtestshave also been found to correlate pos-itively with academic achievement(Braden, 1990; M. Kelly & Braden,1990; Stewart, 1981).According to Felser and Clahsen

(2009), children and late second-lan-guage learners usually exhibit slowerlanguage processing speed than ma-ture native speakers. For children, thisslower processing speed is most likelydue to their reduced attention andWM spans as compared to those ofadults. For non-native late second-lan-guage learners, language processing isthought to be cognitively more de-manding than for native adults. Whilechildren seem to be able to use mono-lingual adultlike processing routinesstarting fairly early in development,

late learners’ processing of some as-pects of grammar appear to remainlike that of non-natives even at higherproficiency levels.As learners experience a language,

whether spoken or signed, one of theprimary tasks is to separate out thediscrete symbols of the languagefrom the flow of sound or sign forcomprehension or acquisition pur-poses (Felser & Clahsen, 2009; Hirsh-Pasek & Gollinkoff, 1996). Mayberryand Fischer (1989) found that non-na-tive signers still struggle with this taskeven in adulthood as compared to na-tive signers, who exhibit languageprocessing skills more indicative of au-tomatic sign recognition. For non- native signers, this “bottleneck” inprocessing has been related to defi -cits in the recall and comprehension ofsigning.

AttentionAttention is the cognitive process offocusing on one aspect of the imme-diate environment and is of great im-portance in the function of WM(Engle, 2002). Subjective measure-ment of attention by means of the Attention Deficit Disorder With Hy-peractivity Comprehensive TeacherRating Scale, the attention-activitysection of the Aggregate Neurobe-havioral Student Health and Educa-tion Review, and Conners’ ParentRating Scale indicated that 14.1% ofdeaf children of deaf parents wouldbe considered to have attentiondeficits, compared to 38.7% of deafchildren of hearing parents (D. Kellyet al., 1993). Approximately 8%–10%of hearing children in the UnitedStates have been diagnosed with at-tention deficits (Centers for DiseaseControl and Prevention, 2010). Othersubjective rating scales have sug-gested no difference between deafand hearing children in attentionskills (Meadow, 1976).

On empirical measures of atten-tion, deaf children have been com-pared to hearing children. Thesecomparisons have revealed bothdeficits (Altshuler, Deming, Vollenwei-der, Ranier, & Tendler,1976; Mitchell &Quittner, 1996; Mykelbust & Brutten,1953; Proksch & Bavalier, 2002; Paras-nis, Samar, & Berent, 2003; Werner &Strauss, 1941) and superior ability(Larr, 1956; McKay, 1952).Deaf individuals are better at at-

tending to and processing informa-tion in their peripheral vision thanhearing individuals (Chen, Zhang, &Zhou, 2006; Loke & Song, 1991). Thelack of hearing to alert the deaf to thelocation of motion or animate objectsin the environment may foster thiscompensation. However, in a class-room where attention should be cen-tered on the teacher or interpreter,attending to peripheral movementmay be problematic (Dye, Hauser, &Bavelier, 2008). Sustaining and appro-priately directing attention in theclassroom does appear to be trouble-some for deaf students. Matthews andReich (1993) found that deaf highschool students attended to a class-mate’s signing about 30% of the timewhen that classmate was communicat-ing with the teacher about class mate-rial. When the teacher was signing tothe whole class, the students attendedto the teacher 44% of the time. If theteacher addressed a particular stu-dent, that student’s attention to theteacher increased to 50%. Marscharkand colleagues (2005) found similarlevels of inattentiveness among deafstudents in college classrooms.

Memory LoadMemory load is the cognitive complex-ity a task presents to an individual. Forexample, the memory load inherent incomprehending a 12-word sentenceis higher than that for comprehend-ing a 3-word sentence. As memory


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load increases, performance often de-creases (Denh, 2008). One factor thatincreases memory load is the redun-dancy and juxtaposition of similarwords in a sentence. For hearing indi-viduals, such sentences are termedtongue twisters (e.g., “She sells seashellsby the seashore”). Tongue twisters in-crease task memory load. Subsequently,comprehension is significantly less ac-curate for these sentence types as com-pared to simple control sentences suchas “She buys her clothes at Old Navy”(Kennison, Sieck, & Briesch, 2003; Mc-Cutchen & Perfetti, 1982; Perfetti & McCutchen, 1982). Thus, formationallysimilar items employed in the same ut-terance can increase memory load.When processing sign language,

deaf adults have been shown to codeitems based on the cherological(Stokoe, 1960) or sign-based forma-tional features of the items (Bellugi etal., 1975; Hamilton & Holzman, 1989;Hanson, 1982; Shand, 1982; M. Wilson& Emmorey, 1997, 1998). Deaf chil-dren have also shown evidence ofcherological coding for signs (Hamil-ton, 1984, 1985; Hirsh-Pasek &Treiman, 1982; Treiman & Hirsh-Pasek, 1983). Print, it appears, can becoded phonologically (Hanson, 1990;Hanson & E. H. Lichtenstein, 1990) orcherologically (Krakow & Hanson,1985; Shand & Klima, 1981; M. Wilson& Emmorey, 1997, 1998). Treiman andHirsh-Pasek (1983) examined deaf in-dividuals’ comprehension of “finger-fumbler” sentences (Kilma & Bellugi,1979), in which signs for the printedwords were formationally similar. Re-sults indicated that as task difficultyincreased, reading comprehension ofsingle sentences decreased for lessproficient deaf readers. Comprehen-sion was significantly less for sen-tences that contained words whosesigns were formationally similar, suchas “I ate apples at home yesterday,”than for control sentences, such as “I

ate the bananas at work last week.” Ac-cording to Treiman and Hirsh-Pasek,the underlined words have signs thatare considered visually similar. Thesewords were culled from the data col-lected by Bellugi and Siple (1974), Bel-lugi and colleagues (1975), and Klimaand Bellugi (1979). These signedwords’ similarity lies in the fact thatthey are all produced in locationsaround the mouth and lower frontside of the face. Also, EAT and HOMEshare a handshape, while HOME andYESTERDAY share a similar movementand location.In the area of sequential recall,

Rudner and Rönnberg (2008) haveprovided evidence that deaf adults aresimilar to hearing adults in sequentialrecall of pictures when memory loadrequirements are low. However, asmemory load increases, sequentialrecall becomes more difficult for deafindividuals sooner than for hearing in-dividuals.

Memory Strengths andResearch Questions forLanguage Learning and EducationFree RecallFor free recall, that is, recalling a listin any order, memory span is equiva-lent in adult deaf ASL signers andhearing English-speakers for printedwords (Hanson, 1982, 1990) and, re-spectively, for ASL signs and spokenwords (Boutla et al., 2004). In regardto children, Liben (1979) found freerecall for line drawings to be similarfor deaf and hearing subjects. Simi-larly, no significant difference hasbeen found between the free recall ofsequentially presented shapes by deafand hearing children (Todman &Seedhouse, 1994). Can this strengthbe useful in academic learning, wherefree recall ability is beneficial for taskssuch as remembering the names ofthe states or the bones in the body?

Visuospatial RecallVisuospatial recall refers to the recallof items presented in some form of vi-sual array such as blocks on a table orobjects in a grid. For sequential recallof nonlinguistic visuospatial items,such as in the Corsi block- tappingtest, deaf adults and children provesuperior to hearing individuals (Ala-margot, Lambert, Thebault, & Dansac,2007; Geraci et al., 2008; Logan, May-berry, & Fletcher, 1996; M. Wilson,Bettger, Niculae, & Klima, 1997). Inthe Corsi block-tapping test, the ex-perimenter touches a static series ofblocks randomly arranged on a board;the subject must then touch theblocks in the same sequential order.In a similar task, the Knox cube test,which employs a static straight line ofblocks, deaf children are also supe-rior to hearing children in sequentialrecall of a visuospatial array (Blair,1957). Deaf children have also shownequal sequential visuospatial recallability to hearing children in the Si-mon game, in which a sequence offlashing colored lights arranged in acircle is recalled by touching the lightsin the order of presentation (Tomlin-son-Keasey & Smith-Winberry, 1990).Also in the nonlinguistic visuospa-

tial domain, Parasnis and colleagues(1996), utilizing the Revised Visual Re-tention Test (Benton, 1974), found nosignificant difference between hear-ing and deaf children in their ability torecall (by drawing) a series of geomet-ric figures presented via a static se-quential pattern (a line of figurespresented all at once). Hauser, Dye,Cohen, and Bavelier (2007), utilizingadult native deaf signers and the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test,found no significant difference be-tween hearing and deaf subjects onrecall as shown by their drawings ofsimple and complex geometric fig-ures. The Rey-Osterrieth ComplexFigure Test addresses spatial percep-


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tion and visual memory. Similar re-sults on this test have been found fordeaf children (Eldredge, 1984; El-dredge & Zhang, 1988; Parasnis &Kirk, 2004).Deaf adolescent and adult subjects

also have performed equally as well ashearing subjects on recall of static se-quential presentation of shapes (a lineof shapes shown all at once), but notas well as hearing subjects on recallof temporal sequentially presentedshapes (shapes that are presentedone at a time and disappear beforethe next shape appears), which re-quire serial recall. Similar results werefound when digits (linguistic stimuli)were used as the recall items (Olsson& Furth, 1966).Also investigating linguistic items,

Flaherty and Moran (2004) studiedthe sequential recall of deaf and hear-ing college students who read phono-logically based English, and Japanesedeaf and hearing college students familiar with reading kanji symbols(logographs), which are not phono-logically based. Flaherty and Moranfound that deaf participants showedshorter sequential memory spansthan hearing participants for Englishwords. However, sequential memoryspans were similar for deaf and hear-ing participants for words in kanji.Japanese deaf students reported us-ing a visual gestalt memory strategy,seeing the sequence as a whole,rather than the sequential strategy of-ten reported by the English-readingdeaf students. Similar results werefound in a study involving only hear-ing and deaf Japanese students (Fla-herty & Moran, 2001).Investigating free recall of visu-

ospatially arranged linguistic items,Blair (1957) found deaf children supe-rior to hearing children in the free re-call of everyday objects placed on agrid. The children were shown 15items on a grid for 20 seconds. The

items were then removed, and thechildren’s task was to place them backin their original locations.Deaf individuals’ strength appears

to lie in the recall of information pre-sented in static visuospatial format.This appears to hold for both nonlin-guistic and linguistic items. Can educa-tors devise presentation strategies thatallow deaf students to take advantageof this memory strength for the pro-cessing of sequential linguistic infor-mation, particularly English print?

ImageryImagery is the ability to create, main-tain, and manipulate a visual image inWM. Enhanced visuospatial abilities ofdeaf individuals compared to hearingindividuals have been reported for imagery (Blair, 1957; Emmorey &Kosslyn, 1995; Emmorey, Kosslyn, &Bellugi, 1993; McKee, 1988) and men-tal rotation of visuospatial stimuli(Emmorey, Klima, & Hickcok, 1998;McKee, 1988). Can deaf individuals’enhanced imagery ability be used toincrease learning and academicachievement in order either to en-hance WM or reduce the WM loadpresented by a learning task?

Dual EncodingDual encoding refers to the individ-ual’s use of both sign and speechcodes when signs and speech are presented simultaneously. This simul-taneous presentation is called Simul-taneous Communication (SimCom).Though such presentation is oftenmaligned in the research literature(Kluwin 1981; Luetke-Stahlman, 1988;Marmor & Petitto, 1979; Woodward &Allen, 1988), simultaneously commu-nicated lists of words have been foundto be recalled better than sign-onlyand speech-only presentations byboth hearing and deaf signers. This ef-fect has been shown to be particularlystrong for deaf signers (Hamilton &

Holzman, 1989). Problematically,however, research has shown thatskill in the use of SimCom is often er-ratic, with elements of the syntax,grammar, and meaning of a messagebeing inconsistent. In the classroom,most teachers use a form of English-like signing (formerly known as Pid-gin Sign English) that is neither astrict coding of English nor of ASL,but contains features of both lan-guages, along with speech, and con-sistently follows English word order(Akamatsu, Stewart, & Mayer, 2004).Hearing teachers using English-likesigning often drop signs from signedsentences (Kluwin 1981; Luetke-Stahlman, 1988; Marmor & Petitto,1979; Woodward & Allen, 1988). Inclassroom signing, Luetke-Stahlman(1991) found that hearing teacherstrying to represent English whensigning were able to encode themeaning of the target sentence about71% of the time, omitted a sign orsign marker over 50% of the time,and used wrong or invented signs.Yet these same signers believed wereaccurately communicating via signs.Mayer and Lowenbraun (1990), how-ever, found that if teachers weregiven appropriate training and werecommitted to signing English, theycould effectively sign at a speech-to-sign ratio of greater than 90%. Themajority of hearing signers, however,do not exhibit such high levels ofskill (Kluwin 1981; Luetke-Stahlman,1988; Marmor & Petitto, 1979; Wood-ward & Allen, 1988).Research is needed in the area of

SimCom. Is recall and comprehen-sion of SimCom superior to sign-onlycommunication in the classroom dur-ing presentation of information morecomplex than simple word lists? If so,can the use of SimCom be improvedin general, or should it be targetedfor controlled simple communicationsettings?


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Memory Strengths if aParticular Strategy Is EmployedPhonological EncodingPhonological encoding refers tospeech-based/articulatory encoding(Dodd & Hermelin, 1977; Hanson,1991). This forms the basis for the“functional equivalence hypothesis”as stated by McQuarrie and Parrila(2009):

The central claim of the functionalequivalence hypothesis posits thatvisible speech information (seen ar-ticulatory gesture) extracted fromthe speech signal by the deaf learneris interpreted as a phonologicallyplausible signal by the brain (Camp-bell, 1987; Dodd, 1976; Dodd & Her-melin, 1977). . . . On this basis, it hasbeen further suggested that with thehelp of the visual information ac-quired through speechreading(Campbell, 1987; Dodd, 1976; Dodd& Hermelin, 1977) and the articula-tory feel of words that comes throughintensive speech training (Marschark& Harris, 1996), deaf children can de-velop phonological representationsof words. (p. 137)

The use of a speech-based phonologi-cal code has been positively corre-lated with reading comprehension inhearing children (Cain, 2006, P. deJonge & P. F. de Jonge, 1996; Engle etal., 1991; Engle, Kane, & Tuholski,1999; Goswami & Bryant, 1990). Con-sequently, phonological encoding hasbecome a “hot” topic in deaf educa-tion, particularly in the area of reading(Allen et al., 2009; Mayberry, del Giu-dice, & Lieberman, 2011; Paul, Wang,Trezek, & Luckner, 2009; Wang, Trezek,Luckner, & Paul, 2008).It appears, though, that when read-

ing, some deaf individuals employphonological encoding while othersdo not. Research indicates that deaf

children are less likely than hearingchildren to employ phonological en-coding in WM, reading, and spellingacross a range of tasks (Beech & Har-ris, 1997; Harris & Beech, 1998; Leybaert & Alegria, 1995; Merrills, Un-derwood, & Wood, 1994; Nielsen &Luetke-Stahlman, 2002; Transler & Re-itsma, 2005). When employed,phonological or articulatorily basedencoding has been shown to facilitatesequential recall by deaf adults (Kyle,1981; S. Lichtenstein, 1998) and chil-dren (MacSweeney, 1998), and hasbeen positively correlated with read-ing comprehension ability in deaf in-dividuals (Campbell & Wright, 1988;Dyer, MacSweeney, Szczerbinski,Green, & Campbell, 2003; Harris &Beech, 1998; Kyle & Harris, 2006,2010; E. H. Lichtenstein, 1985; S. Licht-enstein, 1998; Perfetti & Sandak, 2000;Wang et al., 2008). No positive relationhas been found between phonemicawareness (the ability to hear, identify,and manipulate phonemes) and read-ing ability in deaf students (Harris &Beech, 1998; Kyle & Harris, 2006; Narr,2008).In a meta-analysis of studies investi-

gating phonological encoding andreading in deaf students, Mayberryand colleagues (2011) found thatphonological encoding accounted foronly about 11% of the variance inreading ability, while language abilityaccounted for 35% of the variance.Not surprisingly, language does ac-count for more variance in readingability than phonological encoding.The development of language is cru-cial in all aspects of a child’s life, andsign language is often the most effec-tive tool for facilitating language ac-quisition by deaf children. That doesnot negate the fact that phonologicalencoding does account for some vari-ance in reading ability and is an im-portant area to consider.Thus, the ability to code informa-

tion phonologically is a WM strengththat should be considered when in-struction is being designed. Phono-logical encoding does not rely onhigher-level phonemic awareness, forwhich hearing ability seems impor-tant. Rather, phonological encodingfor deaf individuals appears to rely onwhole word phonological/articulatoryencoding that may be enhanced viathe development of speechreading,which has been positively correlatedwith reading ability in deaf children(Harris & Moreno, 2006; Kyle & Harris, 2006, 2010).Can speechreading training that

specifically targets the developmentof phonological/articulatory codingenhance the sequential recall and lan-guage and reading comprehension ofdeaf students? Can speech articu -lation training enhance the qualityand use of phonological/articulatoryencoding?

RehearsalRehearsal refers to the overt or covertrepetition of items to be recalled orlearned. For deaf learners, overt signrehearsal has been shown to increaseimmediate sequential recall of

• printed words (Bonvillian, Rea,Orlansky, & Slade, 1987)

• images (Bebko, 1984; Bebko &McKinnon, 1990)

• signed phrases (Weaver, Hamil-ton, Bruckman, & Starner, 2010)

It is important to note that deafstudents do not spontaneously userehearsal as early in life as hearing stu-dents. Rehearsal appears in hearingstudents around the age of 7 or 8years; by comparison, it appears indeaf signing students at age 10 yearsor later (Bebko, 1979; Flavell, Beach,& Chinsky, 1966; Gill, Klecan-Aker,Roberts, & Fredenburg, 2003). How-ever, after instruction in overt re-


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hearsal and employment of this strat-egy, deaf students have performed aswell as hearing students in recall tasks(Bebko, 1984; Belmont, Karchmer, &Pilkonis, 1976).One study has reported evidence of

6- and 8-year-old deaf children sponta-neously using both sign- and speech-based rehearsal during recall tasks forpictures, shapes, fingerspelling, andprint. Rehearsal, however, did notappear to enhance recall for thesechildren (Liben & Drury, 1977). Theemergence of rehearsal in deaf stu-dents appears to be directly related tolanguage experience (Bebko & McKin-non, 1990), and more specifically tolanguage proficiency and automatizedor automatic language processing (Be-bko, Bell, Metcalfe-Haggert, & McKin-non, 1998).

Implications of WorkingMemory Deficiencies for LearningMemory DeficitsPerhaps the most striking implicationof deaf individuals’ deficiencies in WMlies is the fact that they all relate toprocesses that are used during thecomprehension and learning of lan-guage. Attention is absolutely neces-sary as a first step in acquiring languagedata in the environment. Processingspeed must then be adequate for theencoding and manipulation of thisdata. Automatized recognition of signsis imperative so that the “bottleneck”described by Mayberry and Fischer(1989) does not stress memory load,causing processing difficulties. Finally,the ability to maintain sequential lin-guistic information in WM is a keycomponent of cognition, particularlyduring language parsing (McElree,Foraker, & Dyer, 2003; Sperber, D.Premack, & A. J. Premack, 1995). Willisand Gathercole (2001) have suggestedthat limited, less accurate sequentialWM ability may be responsible for

slow acquisition of language in hear-ing children and that, thus, sequentialmemory skills are considered a crucialpart of the language learning mecha-nism for young children. The lack ofsequential processing skills or the fail-ure to use a sequential strategy duringprocessing of linguistic information inWM may limit the deaf individual’sability to grasp syntactic order. Such adeficit can impede language develop-ment and, subsequently, the compre-hension of signed or printed material,with negative consequences for aca-demic achievement.With deficient WM abilities, deaf

children of hearing parents, in partic-ular, are put in double jeopardy forcommunicative and academic failure.Not only are these children deprivedof language interaction (Gallaudet Research Institute, 2008; Goldin-Meadow, 1999; Goldin-Meadow & My-lander, 1990; Lederberg, 2006) thatfosters communicative and academicgrowth (and most likely WM capacityfor language), they are put in the po-sition of attempting to process therelatively few accessible linguistic in-teractions they are privy to with WMabilities that are subpar compared tothose of hearing children, who re-ceive a wealth of linguistic input andinteraction. The quantity and qualityof language interaction have also beenrelated to language learning and edu-cational achievement of hearing chil-dren (Risley & Hart, 2002). Researchhas found strong predictive relation-ships between language skills andreading ability, the latter of which is a major component of academicachievement both for hearing children(Bowey & Patel, 1988; Dickinson, McCabe, Anastasopoulos, Peisner-Feinberg, & Poe, 2003; Juel, Griffith, &Gough, 1986; Snow, Tabors, & Dickin-son, 2001) and deaf children (Harris &Moreno, 2004; Kyle & Harris, 2006;Mayberry et al., 2011; Padden & Han-

son, 2000; Strong & Prinz, 2000). Thesynergistic relationship among lan-guage, WM, and reading is currentlyrealized in deaf high school students,as 50% read at the fourth-grade levelor below upon graduation (GallaudetResearch Institute, 1996; Traxler, 2000)and 30% leave high school func -tionally illiterate (Marschark, 1997;Marschark, Lang, & Albertini, 2002).The academic achievement of deafstudents has remained at these levelsfor approximately 30 years (Qi &Mitchell, 2007), regardless of the edu-cational or language policy of the day.Language delay and educational un-derachievement of deaf individualsmay thus be attributed to at least twofactors: lack of accessible linguistic in-teraction with skilled signers and, sub-sequently, insufficient WM skills toassist these individuals during lan-guage and academic learning.

Memory StrengthsThe WM strengths of deaf individualsin the areas of free recall, imagery, vi-suospatial recall, dual encoding,phonological encoding, and rehearsalall have implications for improvingthe design and delivery of instruction.The deaf individual’s strengths can beutilized and deficiencies remediatedor compensated for so that communi-cation and academic achievement canbe enhanced. The WM strengths justlisted are applied in the instructionaldesign of the WM interventions de-scribed below in order to enhanceprocessing skills and subsequentlearning. Other strategies may also beuseful, and empirical validation is nec-essary in all cases.

Applications for LearningWM InterventionsNow that the WM deficiencies andstrengths of deaf learners and the sub-sequent implications have been de-scribed, how can these deficiencies


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be remediated or strengths utilized toenhance learning? One way is throughWM interventions. Feifer and DeFina(2000) have suggested that memoryintervention is most successful duringearly childhood and the early elemen-tary school years due to brain matura-tion. Change is more difficult onceneural structures are established andmyelination is complete. However,several studies have shown that chil-dren ages 7–15 years can benefit fromWM intervention (Comblain, 1994;McNamara & Scott, 2001; Minear &Shah, 2006).Denh (2008) describes interven-

tions for WM as either compensatoryor remedial. Compensatory methodstypically involve training in memorystrategies and may also include vari-ous external aids and methods for by-passing the deficient processes andreducing task demands. Remedialmethods generally address the indi-vidual’s memory deficits in order toreduce them. The research literatureis mixed in its findings regarding theeffectiveness of remedial interven-tions. Lee and Riccio (2005) found re-medial intervention ineffective, butothers (Comblain, 1994; Holmes etal., 2009; Klingberg et al., 2005; Kling-berg, Forssberg, & Westerberg, 2002;Mezcappa & Buckner, 2010) have de-scribed successful remedial inter-ventions. A combined interventionapproach applying both compensa-tory and remedial techniques hasbeen shown to be the most successful(Denh, 2008).Interventions can also focus on

either domain-specific or domain-general skills. Domain-specific skillsare those involving specific areas ofknowledge such as language skills ormath facts. Domain-general skills in-clude higher-order, more abstractcognitive skills such as WM capacity(Roberts, 2007). Remedial and com-pensatory interventions addressing

these two domains are described be-low. This list is not exhaustive, as otheractivities can also serve to address WMand enhance language learning andacademic achievement.

Preschool Years: Birth toKindergartenAs has been stated in many researcharticles on deafness, early exposureto accessible language is imperative.This often means sign language. Inter-action with fluent signers allows thechild to develop the language andprocessing skills needed to achieveacademically. As a rule of thumb for in-teracting with young children and be-ginning signers, adults should signslowly and clearly, and use short sen-tences so as not to overload thechild’s memory during processing.This is a strategy used by parents ofyoung hearing children (Snow, 1977)and teachers of children learningEnglish as a second language (E. Kot-tler, J. A. Kottler, & Street, 2007), andis suggested for teachers of childrenwith WM deficits (Gathercole & Al-loway, 2008).An environment in which the child

is surrounded by fluent signers is of-ten not available to most deaf chil-dren, however (Gallaudet ResearchInstitute, 2008; Goldin-Meadow, 1999;Goldin-Meadow & Mylander, 1990;Lederberg, 2006). As a substitute,signed videos and video games maybe tools that can help enhance thechild’s facility with vocabulary and au-tomatic sign recognition, and hencehis or her WM. However, signed videosand video games cannot be regardedas equal substitutes for interactionswith fluent signers.During the sign presentation in the

video or game, it is probably best tohave a still image behind the signer,as deaf individuals have been shownto attend to peripheral distractors(Chen, Zhang, & Zhou, 2006; Loke &

Song, 1991) rather than to the centralinformation source, which in this casewould be the signer. If the media in-clude action that the signer is describ-ing, it may be best to use a sequentialpresentation in which the signer is fol-lowed by the action, again for atten-tion reasons. The efficacy of signedvideos and games and the particularpresentation formats that facilitatelanguage processing and develop-ment are open research questionsworthy of investigation. Many signedvideos and games are available oncommercial DVDs and at no charge atthe website of the Electric LanguageFactory, www.cats.gatech.edu/cats/ELF/index.htm.Reciting nursery rhymes, singing

songs, and performing action chantsare applications of rehearsal that canbe used with young deaf children toimprove their sequential WM skillsand, subsequently, their language pro-cessing skills. These are common prac-tices in many hearing children’s homesand preschools and may serve the un-intended purpose of developing se-quential WM for language. “Jack BeNimble” and “The Wheels on the Bus”are, respectively, examples of English-language rhymes and songs. Actionchants are simple rhymes that are ac-companied by physical actions as op-posed to simply saying the rhyme.“Ring Around the Rosie” is an English-language action chant in which chil-dren hold hands and walk in a circlereciting the chant; then “all fall down.”An ASL action chant that followed theformat of an ASL number story mightbe “ONE, TWO SQUIRRELS HOP-AROUND,” after which the personsreciting the chant would hop aroundthe room. Other examples of sign lan-guage nursery rhymes, songs, andchants are available on YouTube, atsign2me.com, and in Hamilton (1987,1988). As I noted earlier in the presentarticle, deaf children are similar to


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hearing children in the recall of se-quential information when trained torehearse. The rote recitation inherentin producing signs of rhymes, songs,and action chants may aid in the devel-opment of sign language and WM skills,particularly rehearsal. Pictures, anima-tions, or physical responses such ashopping, as in the “ONE, TWO SQUIR-RELS” action chant, should accompanyproduction of these verses to permitbetter understanding of the signing.Completing daily household tasks

can further assist the child in sequen-tial WM development. The adult canstart by asking the child to do a singletask, such as “Get your shirt,” thenprogress to two tasks such as “Getyour dirty clothes and put them in thewash,” and then to three or moretasks that should be done sequen-tially. The use of the ASL mechanismfor referencing the items on a list onthe nondominant hand (Baker-Shenk& Cokely, 1991) may facilitate recall forthe child, as this provides a visuospa-tial reference for each item. Adultscould help the child rehearse the tasksto be done, as both use the nondomi-nant hand placeholders. Empirical val-idation of this ASL mechanism as amemory support tool is needed.For free recall, the parent can tell

the child what items are needed in thestore during a shopping trip and thenhave the child lead the search to findthem. For young children who cannotfind items in a store yet, the parentcan simply tell the child an item ortwo they need as they go through thestore and, when they find the item, re-peat its name. Parents can increasethe number of items as the child be-comes more adept with language. Forother activities that address WM inyoung children, see Gibson (2003).

School Years: Grades 1–12Regardless of students’ languagebackground and WM ability, schools

are mandated to teach academic con-tent. For that reason, in the presentarticle I will discuss techniques to ad-dress WM skills within the domain-specific areas of language arts,mathematics, and content-area sub-jects, as well as techniques for man-aging WM load through instructionaldesign.

Language Arts: LanguageComprehensionThe drag-and-drop feature available inPowerPoint provides an easy-to-usetool for teachers to develop activitiesthat focus on sequential memory dur-ing sentence comprehension. Figure1 shows a slide that can be used forsuch an activity. Many of the imagesare animated to represent the actionof the verb as clearly as possible.These and similar images are availableat www.animfactory.com, the websiteof the Animation Factory, a distributorof still and motion picture images.

Using the slide in Figure 1, theteacher can present a sentence in signand a student can drag images ontothe white area to create a picture thatrepresents the meaning of the sen-tence. The student must maintain thesequential order of the sentence inWM long enough to comprehend itand then manipulate the images tocreate the picture. It is important touse sentences in which the subjectand object are interchangeable. Thisforces the student to use sequentialinformation to correctly comprehendthe sentence. Short sentences such as“The girl is scolding the man” and“The man is scolding the girl” are twoexamples. Longer sentences such as“The mouse is looking at the fat man”and “The man with the popcorn anddrink is watching the girl who is cry-ing” can be used with this same slide.It is also important to use absurd or

silly sentences that require sequentialprocessing in order to be understood


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Figure 1

Drag-and-Drop Slide

Note. Images © 2011 Jupiterimages Corporation.

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correctly. The students must followthe word order of the sentence to cor-rectly comprehend the sentence evenwhen the result is an image with a lowprobability of actually occurring inreal life. A sentence such as “The cat isscolding the girl” can be made usingthe images in Figure 1. Until about age4 years 6 months, hearing childrenwill often comprehend such sen-tences by using an “event probability”strategy (i.e., make sense of the sen-tence regardless of word order), inthis case producing a picture showingthe girl with the cake scolding the catnear the spilt milk. Evidence for thisbehavior has been found not only forEnglish-speaking children (Stroehner& Nelson, 1974) but also for speakersof Italian (Bates, 1976; Bates et al.,1984; Duranti & Ochs, 1979), French(Sinclair & Bronckart, 1972), Spanish(Reyes, 2003), and German (Lindner,2003). Data I have collected in regardto ASL comprehension indicate thatnon-native signers, hearing and deaf,tend to use “event probability” duringlanguage processing, often to a greaterextent than hearing children do.Also of interest in this area is the

work of Treiman and Hirsh-Pasek(1983). Their research indicated thatsentences that contained signs thatwere formationally similar were moredifficult to comprehend than sen-tences with formationally dissimilarsigns, due to the WM load involved ineach (see discussion above under“Memory Load”). When constructingsentences for a comprehension task,teachers should be aware of this phe-nomenen so that they can eitheravoid or include such sentences, de-pending on the students and goal ofthe lesson.

Language Arts: ReadingReading English print is primarily a se-quential WM processing task, as Eng-lish uses a rather strict adherence to

word order to communicate meaning.For instructional purposes, print canactually serve to reduce WM load in-herent in the sequential presentationof signs that appear and then aregone. Print provides a static visuospa-tial sequential stimulus and allows theteacher to visually reference keywords or phrases simply by pointingto them. Thus, the compensatory el-ements afforded by print and em-ployed by the teacher may helpreduce the WM load inherent in pro-cessing sequential language for non-native signers. All words used in suchan activity must be automatized, orthe added memory load of encounter-ing unknown words will negate theadvantage gained from the static se-quential presentation.The drag-and-drop task described

above can also be used for reading in-struction and will allow for imagery tobe used by the teacher and studentsto aid in comprehension. Instead ofsingle sentences, a story could beused as the content for the activity.For illustration purposes, descriptionof a reading activity addressingpronominal reference follows. UsingFigure 1, the presented short storycould be “The man scolded the cat.He was angry. She spilled the milk.”After a picture was created to showthe meaning of the first sentence, theimages that were created could beused to support further comprehen-sion of the pronominal reference inthe other two sentences. The teachercould refer to the image created onthe screen to show pronoun refer-ence. The teacher could then presenta similar sentence sequence substitut-ing different nouns, ask the studentsto imagine what the scene would looklike, then draw it, drag-and-drop im-ages, or answer questions about thenew sentence sequence to indicatecomprehension. Pictures and textfrom storybooks, guided readers, or

chapter books could also be used. Acommercially available program, theLindamood-Bell Learning Process, hasbeen shown to improve reading scoresof hearing students by teaching thestudents to use visualization and im-agery (Sadoski & Willson, 2006). Thismay be a useful program for deaf students.Processing speed is very important

during reading (Lesgold & Perfetti,1978; Perfetti & Lesgold, 1978), and isbest represented by the term auto-maticity, the instantaneous recogni-tion of words. Grushkin (1998) hassuggested that automatic word recog-nition can alleviate memory load dur-ing the act of reading comprehension.Conversely, struggling to recognizewords during reading causes fewerWM resources to be available duringreading comprehension (Denh, 2008).Simple repetition activities to fosteroverlearning of printed words canhelp the learner attain automaticity.Reading words or sentences pre-

sented for a short period of time canhelp readers develop speed of pro-cessing. This can be done in theclassroom by means of PowerPointpresentations with the word, sen-tence, or short paragraph presentedon a slide which is set to transition toa blank slide via the timer feature inPowerPoint. The use of tachistoscopeprograms may also be useful. Severalfree programs are available on the In-ternet, such as RAM4 (http://www.slu.edu/colleges/AS/languages/classical/ram/ram.html) . A low-tech solution issimply to present the target word(s)on a whiteboard, then cover or erasethem after a short time.Captioned video is also useful for

building processing speed and se-quential WM, as the caption presenta-tion is time limited and sequential.The teacher can pause the video im-mediately after the presentation ofthe caption and ask the students what


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the caption said, and other questionsabout the caption. The caption pres-entation also can build focused atten-tion, as the student must ignore theactivity on the screen and focus onthe captions. Without automatic wordrecognition, proficient processingspeed, sufficient sequential WM, andthe ability to focus attention on thecaption and not the peripheral action,it seems that captioned video wouldbe nonbeneficial to the viewer.The lack of knowledge of English

printed words also affects readinggreatly. When readers know less than90% of the words in a passage, com-prehension drops to 50% or less(Johns, 2009). This is particularly truefor deaf readers (Albertini & Mayer,2011; Davey & King, 1990; LaSasso &Davey, 1987; Paul, 1996; Paul &Gustafson, 1991; Paul & O’Rourke,1988). During the reading of any printmaterial, online or off, an English-ASLlearning aid, the SMARTSign-Diction-ary (www.cats.gatech.edu), provides atool for quickly finding a sign or signsfor a word and also reduces thememory load inherent in mentallysearching for signs for unknown ornonautomatized words. Students cansimply type the English word into theSMARTSign-Dictionary and then seethe sign(s) for that word. Often, pic-ture support is provided to enhancethe learning of the word-sign pairthrough the provision of imagery forthe concept being represented. Thisis especially important for youngreaders who are new to signs andmay be encountering the sign for thefirst time via exposure to the Englishword in a book. Google Images(www.google.com) provides anotherpowerful tool that allows users to enter words and search for images.Google Images essentially functionsas a picture dictionary.Online electronic dictionary use

is common among adult second-

language learners. Lan (2005) foundthat over 70% of the interviewed stu-dents at Hong Kong Polytechnic Uni-versity who were learning English as asecond language were online diction-ary users. Use of an electronic diction-ary such as the SMARTSign-Dictionarymay assist deaf readers during thereading process. It can be used ondesktop computers or laptop comput-ers, tablet computers, and cell phonesfor mobility.As I have already discussed in the

present article, language ability ac-counts for a large part of reading abil-ity. Major contributions to readingcomprehension are also made by lan-guage skills, vocabulary knowledge,reading fluency as evidenced by theautomatized recognition of words,and general world knowledge, as wellas by viewing the reading process as awhole (Denh, 2008). Phonological en-coding is also important. Phonologicalencoding can be developed throughactivities that focus on speechreading(Kyle & Harris, 2006, 2010) and articu-lation (McQuarrie & Parrila, 2009). Itseems important to relate speechreadand spoken articulated words directlyto known printed words in order tohave an effect on reading (Marschark& Harris, 1996).In the classroom, speaking infor-

mation during highly contextualizedroutine situations can help enablephonological encoding by fosteringthe development of speechreading. Ifit is time for lunch and the teacher hasdaily signed “TIME FOR LUNCH,” thisinformation can be presented viasigns, then speech, and finally throughspeech alone as the students becomefamiliar with the situation. It is impor-tant to ask the students what was saidand then also quickly present theprint for the spoken words to estab-lish the speechreading-print connec-tion. Asking the students to say thephrase will also build the phonologi-

cal/articulatory representation of thetarget phrase. It is likely that the rep-resentation the student produces willnot need to match a “perfect English”representation of the words. The rep-resentation should, however, be differ-ent from the representation of otherwords or phrases. This will allow thestudent to use an internally consistentphonological/articulatory code, whichis of benefit in WM. If the studentscodes all words with the same articula-tory code (e.g., buh) it seems less likelythat such a code will be beneficial.Speech therapists might be able tomake a significant contribution to literacy development by includingspeechreading and articulation activi-ties related to print in their work withstudents. Research is needed to deter-mine the empirical validity of this hy-pothesis.

Language Arts: WritingBuilding English schemas via visuospa-tial scaffolding has proven successfulin helping deaf students develop basicEnglish writing skills (Hamilton &Jones, 1989). According to Chi, Glaser,and Rees (1982), a schema categorizeselements of information according tothe manner in which those elementswill be used. Schemas are examples ofsophisticated rules and are stored inlong-term memory. It is importantfor schemas to become automatizedso that they can be used quickly and effortlessly. Practice with schemashelps them become automatized(Paas, 1992). Learners who have au-tomated a schema have more WM ca-pacity available to use the schema tosolve more sophisticated problems(Sweller, 1988).Denh (2008) describes scaffolding

as a strategy that can enhance WM.Scaffolding provides the learner withinitial support for the learning taskand gradually removes the supportwhile maintaining a low-error envi-


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ronment for the student. As studentsshow success, the support is removeduntil the student is performing thetask correctly without the scaffolding.A tool that provides scaffolding forbuilding schemas for writing basicEnglish sentences, Simple SentenceLab (SSL), contains activities that areboth compensatory and remedial innature. (SSL is available at no charge atwww.cats.gatech.edu/cats/CatSoft/SSL.htm.) Teachers can use any subjectmatter in SSL simply by typing sen-tences into the program. The sen-tences can be about a field trip,storybook, or news event, or aca-demic content from science or socialstudies. As few as 5 and as many as 15sentences can be entered. These lim-its are established to manage WM loadby not overloading it. Long stories canbe broken into chapters, and contentinformation can be broken into multi-ple units, if necessary. More than adozen activities that address sequen-tial memory, sentence production,spelling, chunking of English phrases,rehearsal, and schema building forwritten English are available and pro-vided in a suggested sequence thatinitially provides supportive scaffold-ing and then progressively removes it.Both computer-based and paper-and-pencil tasks are used.Figure 2 illustrates the schema and

visual scaffolding provided for sen-tences entered into the SSL program.Students can create a story, summa-rize content, or answer teachers’questions using this schema. Asshown in Figure 2, the student has al-ready typed in the subject nounphrase of a sentence and is ready totype the verb phrase. When that isdone correctly, the grid and text entrybox move to the third column, andthe student enters the final phrase.The scaffolding support provided bythe columns and sliding grid is fadedaway as students perform successfully.

The English sentences that are pro-duced will be syntactically and gram-matically correct due to the responsesallowed in each column. The visualschema and procedure of SSL allowonly correct syntactic sentences, anda built-in grammar only allows gram-matically correct responses. For exam-ple, the student can type “Rattlesnakes eat mice” but not “Rattlesnakes eats mice.” As shown in Figure2, “eats” is grayed out, and SSL’s artifi-cial intelligence will not allow it as anacceptable verb due to the subject-verb agreement necessary with “Rattlesnakes.” The semantic accuracy of thestudents’ responses must be evalu-ated by the teacher. SSL would allowthe grammatically correct sentence“King snakes can’t kill mice,” when ac-tually the opposite is true. This allowsteachers to see what students under-stand about the target content whileproviding scaffold-supported practicein writing English.SSL provides a grammatically “er-

rorless” environment for learningEnglish, which is important for stu-dents with WM deficits (Gathercole etal., 2006). Compensatory support viaa static visuospatial organization ofEnglish draws upon the deaf individ-ual’s strength in sequential recall ofstatic visuospatial items (the SSL grid)and also lessens sequential WM loadas well as organizes English wordsvia grammatically based chunking.Chunking is the grouping of to-be-re-membered items into meaningfulrule-governed units. Verbal sequentialWM capacity expands as chunks areformed by the items to be managed inWM (Denh, 2008). This process is par-ticularly useful in language process-ing, as chunking allows an increase ofnearly threefold in memory span ofnative speakers when sentencesrather than unrelated words are to berecalled (Baddely, 2003; Case, 1977).Language chunks appear to be basedon the rule-governed constituents ofthe particular language known by the


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Figure 2

Simple Sentence Lab Screen

Note. From the Simple Sentence Lab website: www.cats.gatech.edu/cats/CatSoft/SSL.htm

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individual such as noun phrases andverb phrases (Case, 1977). Thus,chunking is a very important aspect ofmaintaining and manipulating linguis-tic items in WM. Providing externalvisual aids that show the students Eng-lish chunks, as in Figure 2, may helpthem to create chunks correspondingto phrases or clauses, and thereby tocreate more manageable units of infor-mation (Montgomery, 2003).

Language Arts: Vocabulary and SpellingIn the present article, learning vocab-ulary refers to learning the meaningof unknown words or signs. Once aword or sign is part of a student’sknown vocabulary, the spelling of theprinted English word can be learned.The student may be simultaneouslylearning vocabulary and the spellingof that vocabulary in school.Learning vocabulary in a classroom

can be enhanced through the use ofvisual imagery. Studies indicate thatthe imageability of a word is a key fac-tor in determining its ease of acquisi-tion (Gillett, H. Gleitman, L. Gleitman,& Lederer, 1999; Ma, Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, McDonough, & Tardif, 2009).Visual imagery has been shown to beparticularly useful for students withdeficits in verbal WM when they possess a strong visuospatial WM.Mnemonic strategies in which a verbalutterance, in this case the meaning ofa word or sign, is related to a visualimage have been successfully used formany years to facilitate recall andlearning (Eslinger, 2002; Levin, 1993;Mastropieri & Scruggs, 1998; Paivio &Csapo, 1969). This approach is mosteffective when the image created isunique, funny, or bizarre (Ritchie &Karge, 1996). As mentioned earlier,the Lindamood-Bell Learning Processprogram focuses specifically on theuse of imagery to enhance readingand its tenets, and such procedures

could be employed during vocabularylearning. For deaf students, providingan image along with a sign or signs forvocabulary would appear to be help-ful. Combining visualization of themeaning of the verbal string with re-hearsal has been found to be more ef-fective than rehearsal alone (Clark &Klecan-Aker, 1992).Learning the spelling of words (i.e.,

the sequence of letters in a word) gen-erally involves the use of rehearsal.For increasing sequential WM skills,rehearsal has been found to be a use-ful strategy (Comblain, 1994; Minear& Shah, 2006), and to facilitate infor-mation storage in long-term memory(Denh, 2008). Training deaf studentsin the use of rehearsal at an early agecan pay benefits immediately and inthe future.Chunking can be also used to re-

duce memory load for deaf students asthey learn vocabulary that will be usedduring reading or writing by taking ad-vantage of the single-sign ASL repre-sentation of English phrases such aslook up, jump over, and get on. Whenthese printed phrases are recognizedas individual chunks, sequential mem-ory span has fewer items to maintain,and memory load is therefore re-duced. Teaching students these Eng-lish phrases, as is done in the Fairviewmethod (Schimmel & Edwards, 2003;Schimmel, Edwards, & Prickett, 1999),may prove beneficial.For classroom instruction in vocab-

ulary or spelling, the use of SimCommay be beneficial. Deaf individualshave been shown to recall simultane-ously communicated lists significantlybetter than lists presented in signonly (Hamilton & Holzman, 1989).Through use of SimCom for con-trolled, structured classroom presen-tation of vocabulary and spelling, thememory enhancement of this dualcode may be realized, while the detri-mental aspects of SimCom such as

dropped signs and faulty syntax areeliminated. Drasgow and Paul (1995)have suggested that the processing re-quirements for producing simultane-ous sign and speech cause signers todelete or incorrectly code signs dueto WM overload. Limiting the use ofSimCom to short bits of informationduring vocabulary and spelling in-struction may enable WM overload tobe eliminated for teachers, while thesimultaneous signal enhances recallfor students. This suggestion requiresempirical validation.

MathematicsVisual imagery has been shown to beparticularly valuable in teaching math-ematics both to hearing students(McLean & Hitch, 1999) and to deafstudents (Blatto-Vallee & R. R. Kelly,2007; Lang & Pagliaro, 2010). Nunes(2006) has described visual displaysthat may enhance mathematics learn-ing by deaf students. These providescaffolding to support number recog-nition for early math facts and formore advanced math processes suchas word problems.Static sequential visuospatial pres-

entation of math facts (e.g., 2 + 4 = 6)provides students with an informationformat that allows for use of their WMstrength in this area and may fostermore efficient learning. Providingmath fact tables for study may also as-sist students by providing a visuospa-tial schema of the facts to be learned.This scaffolding can be faded away asit is internalized and students automa-tize the math facts.To increase processing speed and

automaticity as well as attention, theteacher can use a timed PowerPointpresentation to flash a math fact, orsimply write the math fact on thewhiteboard and then erase it. Afterthe math fact is removed from view,students can write it on paper in arace type of format, which will also


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encourage an increase in processingspeed.Dictating math problems to stu-

dents may also facilitate the develop-ment of WM and math skills. This is aremedial intervention designed to “ex-ercise” and increase WM as opposed tothe compensatory strategy describedearlier utilizing static sequential visu-ospatial presentation. The studentscan write the dictated problem on pa-per and then solve it. If needed, thewords used in the dictation can be ran-domly displayed to eliminate the WMload caused by unknown spellings. Al-ternatively, the words can be arrangedin a visual schema similar to the one inFigure 2. This schema adds scaffoldingfor recalling the dictation using Englishsyntax.Writing the problem on paper en-

ables WM load to be reduced duringproblem solving; the teacher also cansee how much of the problem thestudents actually recalled. To exerciseand enhance WM load capabilities,the teacher can require the students tosolve the problem without writing it onpaper after they are successful in thewriting task. This is an example of scaf-folding being removed.Using the ASL grammatical feature

in which objects are located in spaceand then referred to may also be an ef-fective means of reducing WM load.This type of presentation can also al-low deaf students to employ imageryto “see” the math problem, and allowthe teacher to manually manipulatethe invisible items to explain the nec-essary mathematical process. For ex-ample, the word problem “Jack has 3dogs. Jill has 2 dogs. How many dogsdo they have altogether?” could besigned by placing Jack’s 3 dogs in a lo-cation in the left of the signing space,placing Jill’s 2 dogs in a location to theright, and holding the signs for 3 and2 in the respective locations. Thesigns can then be brought together in

a middle location showing that 3 and2 combine.Teachers can also reduce memory

load during math activities by provid-ing calculators for students who havenot automatized math facts. This canbe helpful to students in learning theprocess of balancing a checkbook orplanning a budget. For higher-ordermath processes such as those in geom-etry, trigonometry, or calculus, automa-tized math facts are imperative so thatWM can focus on the math processesinvolved in these subject areas and notbe overloaded by deficient computa-tional knowledge.

Content Areas: Science, Social StudiesDeaf individuals have shown equalfree recall abilities relative to hearingindividuals across several tasks (Boutlaet al., 2004; Hanson, 1982, 1990; Liben,1979; Todman & Seedhouse, 1994).Two particular types of learning taskslend themselves to free recall: labelingtasks, such as labeling the 50 states ona map, and categorizing tasks, such ascategorizing animals versus plants.These types of activities accompaniedby rehearsal practice can enhance thelearning of content that is not sequen-tially bound.Rehearsal can be valuable in the

area of learning factual informationin content areas. Using repetition forthis important information can facili-tate its long-term storage (Denh,2008) and improve the automaticityof access to it for higher-level cog -nitive processes such as understand-ing chemical bonding between atomsor the principles of a democratic government.Through utilization of the consis-

tent visuospatial schema for English asprovided by SSL (see Figure 2) with avariety of content, content informationmay be learned more efficiently andEnglish skills may increase (Hamilton

& Jones, 1989). Variability of practicematerials has beneficial effects on thetransfer of learning (Cormier & Hag-man, 1987; Jelsma, van Merrienboer, &Bijlstra, 1990; Singley & Anderson,1989). Thus, variability (different sub-ject-area content) of the problem situation (learning the content andproducing English sentences) is ex-pected to encourage learners to de-velop efficient schemas for the targetinformation because it increases theprobability that similar features can beidentified and that relevant featurescan be distinguished from irrelevantones. Consistent use of a tool such asSSL is imperative if it is to be successfulin building schemas.Rudner and Rönnberg (2008) sug-

gest that a presentation style thatplaces less emphasis on the temporalorder of information may facilitatedeaf individuals’ recall performance.The use of visuospatial tools such asflowcharts, boxes, and diagrams fitsthis presentation style. Such tools re-duce memory load (Grushkin, 1998)and subsequently enhance recall andlearning. O’Donnell and Adenwalla(1991) compared the use of visuallydiagrammed information maps andtexts by deaf undergraduate biologystudents. The students scored higheron recall and multiple-choice compre-hension tasks when using the visuallymapped information for learning pur-poses.“Thinking maps” (Hyerle & Yeager,

2007) take advantage of the visuospa-tial abilities of deaf students for staticpresentations of information. Theseare graphic organizers with differentvisual structures that are designed toconsistently represent the same typeof relationships between information,thus building a schema for the con-tent. Such graphic organizers are es-pecially powerful when the studentscreate the organization of the visualschema themselves (Davies, 1980). In-


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spiration, FreeMind, and XMind arecomputer programs that allow forquick free-form construction of visualgraphic organizers. FreeMind (free-mind.en.softonic.com) and XMind(www.xmind.net) are free and avail-able online. Luckner, Bowen, andCarter (2001) have also described vi-sual displays for reducing WM load fordeaf students.

General Concerns for All InstructionAttentionAttention is extremely important dur-ing WM processing (Engle, 2002). If astudent is not attending, little infor-mation can be acquired or compre-hended. An attention strength of deafindividuals may also be a problemduring language processing. Deaf in-dividuals are highly attuned to infor-mation in peripheral vision. Thus,movement on either side of the stu-dent or teacher can be distracting. Todevelop attention to the signer andnot peripheral movement, a teachercan give directions while standingnear a computer or television screendisplaying some type of movement.Students can then follow the direc-tions, with the teacher starting withshort, simple directions and pro-gressing to longer directions. It maybe useful to explain to the studentsthe purpose of the activity in order toenlist a metacognitive strategy thatencourages them to make a con-certed effort to attend to the signer.Also, by adding a distractor such as amoving image to a slide of informa-tion being presented, a teacher canalso address focused attention. How-ever, one should be aware that addingsuch distractors may cause evengreater loss of attention to the teacherthan the 50% reported by Matthewsand Reich (1993). Research into theuse of such attention-building activi-ties is needed.

Memory LoadThe classroom is notorious for over-loading the memory abilities of all stu-dents on a daily basis (Denh, 2008).Assessing the WM load of a task andadjusting it as necessary is importantfor facilitating student success. Theseare some general principles for reduc-ing WM load:

• Language processing, particu-larly of long utterances, mayoverload WM. Comprehensionof verbal material will be en-hanced through the use of lan-guage that is simple, structured,and redundant.

• Multitasking by students placesundue strain on attention, andhence on WM. The teachershould focus on one activity ata time.

• Students with WM deficits canlearn if they have ample expo-sure to material while the de-mands on WM are minimal.

• Students should be allowedtime to process new informa-tion. More learning occurs whenstudents are given time to re-hearse the information and ap-ply memory strategies.

• Repetition or practice of a task isvery important.

• External supports such as visualcues, checklists, and promptswill reduce WM load.

• Learners should be providedwith graduated learning support(scaffolding) until the support isno longer needed. Gathercoleand colleagues (2006) have sug-gested that “errorless learning,”in which errors are prevented orminimized, is much more effec-tive for individuals with WMdeficits than “errorful learn-ing,” essentially learning by trialand error. Several studies haveshown this to be the case (Bad-

deley & B. A. Wilson, 1994;Clare, B. A. Wilson, Carter, Roth,& Hodges, 2002; Hamilton &Jones 1989). If a child has a WMdeficit, it is extremely importantto minimize task failure due toWM load.

ASL may also help reduce WM load.Geraci and colleagues (2008) suggestthat ASL grammar has evolved overtime to utilize the enhanced visuospa-tial memory abilities of deaf individu-als and downplay the deficits. Such adevelopment seems only natural. Re-search should address how the use ofASL (to reduce WM load) and Sim-Com (to provide an enhanced signalthat is recalled better than sign alone)can be best used for communicationand instruction.

WM Activities in the ClassroomDenh (2008) suggests the followingtenets for addressing WM in the class-room. WM activities should

• be brief• be focused on only one strategy• be spaced, with two or three perweek over a long period

• provide plenty of practice thatallows the child to utilize the tar-get strategy

• encourage the child to attributehis or her success to the strategy

• provide multiple sessions sothat ultimately the strategy isoverlearned

• provide positive reinforcementfor successful use of the strategy

• include teaching a child whenand how to use a strategy so thatthe child can apply this metacog-nitive knowledge as necessary

• match the needs of the learnerand be adaptive; as the child’sskills increase, so should taskdifficulty (Holmes et al., 2009;Klingberg et al., 2002, 2005)


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Applying these tenets and enhancingWM can facilitate language learningand academic achievement of deafstudents.

ConclusionIn the present article, I have reviewedliterature on the memory skills of deaflearners and described activities thattake advantage of the deaf individual’smemory strengths to facilitate learn-ing and reduce memory load or to re-duce deficiencies in memory skills thatare important to learning. The deaflearner’s areas of memory deficiencyinclude sequential memory, process-ing speed, attention, and memoryload. Areas of strength include free re-call, visuospatial recall, imagery, anddual encoding. When utilized, phono-logical encoding and rehearsal emergeas strategies that enhance recall. Thesestrategies are not spontaneously usedby all deaf individuals, however, andmay be prime candidates for inclusionin instruction.Instructional design and classroom

practices can draw upon deaf learners’memory strengths, compensate forweaknesses, and attempt to remediatebasic information processing skills sothat linguistic competence and aca-demic achievement can be increased.Activities that can address these areasare described in the present article.Not all suggested activities have beenempirically validated, as the impor-tance of WM in education is just nowbeing realized. Ten specific questionsshould be investigated:

• Can visuospatial organization fa-cilitate recall and learning of se-quential linguistic informationsuch as English syntax?

• Can deaf individuals utilize im-agery for increased learning andacademic achievement?

• Can viewing signed video and playing sign-enhanced

video games enhance languagelearning?

• Given the visual constraint ofbeing able to attend to only oneitem at a time (Wolfe, 2000),what particular presentation for-mats for media can best facilitatelanguage comprehension andlearning?

• Can attention to the signer,rather than to peripheral distrac-tors in a classroom, be taught sothat it exceeds the current 50%benchmark?

• Can speechreading training thatspecifically targets developmentof phonological/articulatory cod-ing enhance the sequential recalland language and reading com-prehension of deaf students?

• Can speech articulation trainingfacilitate phonololgical/articula-tory coding to enhance recall re-gardless of vocal intelligibility?

• Is recall and comprehension ofSimCom superior to sign-onlycommunication in the class-room during presentation of in-formation more complex thansimple word lists? If so, can Sim-Com use be improved? Is Sim-Com best used only in limitedpresentation/communication in-stances, as opposed to open-ended communication?

• Can use of spatially establishedASL referents and manipulationof these referents facilitate mathproblem solving?

• How can ASL (to reduce WMload) and SimCom (to providean enhanced signal that is re-called better than sign alone) bebest used for communicationand instruction?

Finally, instructional practice canadopt the suggestions of Denh (2008)and others for limiting WM load andcreating error-free learning environ-

ments to enhance learning. For exam-ple, the use of visual schemas andscaffolding holds great promise fordeaf education because of these twotechniques’ ability to reduce memoryload and call into play the visuospatialWM strengths of deaf students.The present article has provided a

starting point for raising the aware-ness of educators of deaf students onthe important issue of WM. It also in-cludes detailed suggestions for areasof future research into the utility ofspecific WM activities. The field of WMand its application to education pro-vide new and exciting possibilities forenhancing language learning and aca-demic achievement of deaf students.

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