Importancia de la relación Familia – Escuela

material for the SE and Auslan groups appeared on videotape, signed with and without

speech respectively. In Experiment 3, all the items to be recalled were presented

orthographically. In both experiments, subjects were given practice trials in the memory

span task until they made four successive correct responses. In the experimental phase,

all subjects began with four trials of the two-item lists, and continued until they failed at

least three of the four trials at a particular difficulty level (defined by list size, i.e. the'

number of items per list). Memory trials were only scored correct if all the items were

repeated in their order of presentation. Subjects' scores were calculated as 1.0 plus .25

for each list correctly recalled up to their ceiling. Items were presented throughout at the

rate of one per second.

The order o f presentation was counterbalanced across groups by a Latin Square. Both the timed and recall tasks for a particular list were completed before moving to a new set o f eight items: blocking the task in this manner was expected to reduce potential interference from items in other lists.

Results were analysed using repeated measures ANOVAs, and two-tailed t tests o f planned contrasts.

5.1.3 Predictions

(i) Group 1 (Auslan)

Short sign lists (1 and 2) will be repeated faster and remembered better than the long sign lists (3 and 4).

(ii) Group 3 (Oral)

Faster articulation and better recall will be observed in the short English lists (1 and 3) compared to the long English lists (2 and 4).

(iii) Group 2 (Signed English)

It was argued in Chapter 4 that the SE group forms a unique case, as its members were instructed to both sign and speak. In the timed tasks, where the SE subjects' use of these two media could be verified by observation, it was expected that List 1 (both languages short) would be executed faster than List 4 (both languages long), with the two remaining lists lying between these two extremes. The timed tasks had been deliberately constructed to minimise memory demands, so any idiosyncrasies in memory coding during their putative rehearsal were irrelevant to performance on this task.

Predictions for the SE group on the memory task were more complex than for the other two groups. Only for the two homogenous item lengths in Lists 1 and 4 were the expectations straightforward. In this case it was expected that List 1 (composed of short words and short signs) would be remembered better than List 4 (where both the words and signs had a long duration).

For Lists 2 and 3, each o f which had contrasting sign and English durations, such detailed forecasts o f the SE group's performance were not feasible. This was because of the large individual differences in coding already alluded to: the inclination tow ard sign, or English, or both, fluctuates according to the person. For example, subjects may depend on sign to recall the short signs o f List 2 but rely on English to remember the short words o f the third list.

Nevertheless, the SE group could provide indirect evidence that memory was affected by communication. If its results lay between the other two groups, whose languages each contributed to Signed English, it would be highly coincidental if this pattern were due to other causes.

Time/rate: List 1 will be faster than List 4, and Lists 2 and 3 will fall between them.

Memory span: Short SE stimuli will be remembered better than long SE stimuli (where sign and/or English length are long). That is:

List 1 will be greater than the average o f Lists 2, 3, and 4.

5.2

Methodological considerations

5.2.1 Design features

Both experiments used four word lists in which sign length and English length were varied independently. This design had several advantages. An interaction was expected - that signers would remember the short sign lists better than the long ones, and that there would be superior retention by Oral deaf subjects o f short English lists. Because an interaction between list and communication type was predicted, the fact that the deaf groups used different languages allowed them to act as reciprocal controls for each other.

5.2.2 Onset of rehearsal

In testing for item length effects some care is required in subject selection, because deaf people start rehearsing at a relatively late age. Rehearsal first appears at about 8 years in hearing children following written presentation, and somewhat earlier with auditory stimuli (Bebko, 1979; Flavell, Beach, & Chinsky, 1966; Hitch, Halliday, Dodd, & Littler, 1989; Hitch, Halliday, & Littler, 1993). Correspondingly, the word length effect first appears at about 4 years when spoken words are used (Hulme, Silvester, Smith, & Muir, 1986), and occurs from 8 years onward with written presentation (Hitch & Halliday, 1983; Hitch, Halliday & Littler, 1989; Hulme, Thomson, Muir, & Lawrence, 1984; Hulme & Tordoff, 1989; Nicolson, 1981). Orally educated deaf children show a lag o f about 3 years in their use o f rehearsal, whilst the difference is about 4 years for those who sign (Bebko, 1984). A lower age limit o f 12.0 years for these subjects was therefore adopted in this study.

5.2.3 List controls

The validity o f these experiments hinged on the construction o f lists which reflected differences in communication length to the exclusion o f any other variable. Accordingly, the lists were matched on the following criteria.

(i) Length

Length for the English words was defined by the number o f syllables. Short words were composed o f only one syllable, whilst long words were composed o f three or four.

Sign length was measured according to the number and magnitude o f component movements. All the short signs were composed o f either:

* simple bodily contact (e.g. CHIN, HAND, ROOF, FINGERNAIL); * a single short movement (all remaining signs).

On the other hand, long signs had several movements in space as their distinguishing feature. In general these movements travelled further in space than the movements in the short sign lists. Long signs incorporated either:

* three or four spatial movements made with constant handshapes (e.g. SKETCH, RECTANGLE);

* simple repeated movements (all remaining signs).

(ii) Complexity

Increasing English word length is generally associated with greater complexity, as measured by the number o f different syllables. However, it is syllable/phoneme duration, rather than syllable/phoneme number which affects memory span (Baddeley et al., 1975; Cowan, Day, Saults, Keller, Johnson, & Flores, 1992). Since the effect o f sign complexity on memory is imperfectly documented, it was considered desirable to ensure that complexity was eliminated as a variable from the signed as well as the spoken stimuli. Therefore, all long signs were composed o f repeated movements, so that increasing length was minimally associated with increasing complexity as measured by changes in the configuration o f the hands.