This study shows the developing organization of characteristic with cognitive verbs comparing two groups (children of deaf parents (CODA) and normal children) with elementary schooling phases. We used eighteen 7∼9 year old children with normal parents and deaf parents, and 18 adults. This study investigated how children and adults organize 22 cognitive verbs. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedures were used to uncover the relations participants perceived among the verbs. Children with normal parents and deaf parents differed slight of dimensions in the MDS space. The first and third dimension to emerge from this analysis was related to the uncertainty/certainty and constructive aspects of mental activities in both children. However, the second dimension in children with normal parents was related to the internal/external information-processing aspects of mental activities in children with deaf parents was related to the perceptual input/conceptual output information processing aspects. And cluster analysis and MDS between children with normal parents and adults was comparable. In these experiments, examining the organization of mental verbs in this way has enabled us to expand our understanding of the development of cognitive verbs in ways not evident in other methods. Our results indicate that children with normal parents and deaf parents appear to be different in their organization of linguistic concepts related to cognition. We conclude that linguistic home environment might play a significant role in the development of cognitive verbs based on the results of our study.
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