PROCESSING OF VISUAL ACTION CODES BY DEAF AND HEARING CHILDREN - CODING ORIENTATION OR M-CAPACITY

It was proposed that performance on cognitive tasks is dependent on co mpatibility of task demands with a coding, orientation arising from a particular learning history. Deaf children's early dependence on visua l stimuli and the use of gesture for communication may result in a vis ual-action coding orientation that is highly compatible with the deman ds of certain tasks. such as Pascual-Leone's (1970) compound stimulus visual information (CSVI) task. The prediction followed that deaf chil dren would be superior to hearing children on the CSVI task. The CSVI task was devised by Pascual-Leone as a measure of M-capacity. a centra l processing space that, according to his developmental model, increas es in integer steps with progression through Piagetian stages. The mod el predicts that M-capacity, as measured by the CSVI task, will be con stant across populations irrespective of any differences in their lear ning histories. The competing predictions were tested in an experiment in which deaf and hearing children, matched on age, sex, and nonverba l reasoning, were given a vocabulary test and the CSVI task. The codin g orientation hypothesis was supported by the finding that deaf childr en had lower vocabulary scores but outperformed hearing children on th e CSVI task.