A factorial study of communication and ability in deaf school leavers.

Abstract

Summary. Seventy profoundly deaf school‐leavers were rated by their teachers for speech, lip‐reading, written work and manual communication, and all but four of them were given a comprehensive battery of nineteen standardised tests of cognitive abilities. Pure tone audiometric responses were also recorded. Intercorrelations of all variables were calculated and the correlation matrix was subjected to a principal components analysis. The resultant general and bipolar factors seemed an inappropriate description of the cognitive abilities tested and graphical rotation was undertaken to obtain more meaningful configurations. Orthogonal factors of non‐verbal reasoning, written vocabulary, numerical ability, manual communication and residual hearing were identified. The association of speech development with residual hearing and the absence of significant negative correlations between all variables was noted. Some educational implications of these results are suggested, namely: (1) the techniques for the development of speech in deaf children are notably unsuccessful with the majority of those who have no usable residual hearing; (2) the alleged incompatibility of oral and manual skills is not observable statistically as a negative correlation and (3) the alleged negative correlation between performance test results and verbal attainment does not obtain but the low positive relationship found implies that current educational methods do not effectively gear the intelligence of deaf children to scholastic achievement.