Is Working Memory Different in

Deaf and Hearing Individuals?

Daniel Koo, Ph.D.

Department of Psychology
 Memory
• The ability to encode, store and retrieve
information.
• The basis of which we can analyze and process
linguistic and visual input from the external
world.
• Critical to language development (i.e.
vocabulary)
 Memory
Why is memory important to language
development?
Language is transient in nature.
In a single word, initial phonemes (or signs) are
held in memory until the end of the word is
reached.
In sentences, initial words (or signs) are held in
memory until the end of the sentence.
 Ready?
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Elizabeth, New Jersey, when my mother was being
raised there in a flat over her father’s grocery store,
was an industrial port a quarter the size of Newark,
dominated by the Irish working class and their
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of having been pointedly ill-treated in Elizabeth as
a girl, it was not until she married and moved to
Newark’s new Jewish neighborhood that she
discovered the confidence that led her to become
first a PTA mother, then a PTA vice president and
finally the PTA president. (shortened from Philip Roth’s A
Plot Against America)
 Cues to aid memory of verbal items
• Knowledge of phonology
• Knowledge of syntactic structure
• Contextual information
• Articulation rate
• Semantic knowledge
 Memory Models
• Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968)- Short Term
Store and Long Term Storage
• Baddeley & Hitch (1974)- Working Memory:
“Temporary storage of information that is being processed
in any range of cognitive tasks”
– Phonological Loop Central
– Visuospatial Sketchpad Executive
– Central Executive

Phonological Visuospatial
Loop Sketchpad
 A Working Model

Sensory Working Long-Term

Memory Memory Memory
Phonological
Loop

Encoding Encoding
Visuo-Spatial
Sketch Pad

Retrieval
 Deaf People and Memory
• Serial recall of Digit Span of Hearing non-
signers is typically 7 ± 2 items
• Deaf signers = 4 ± 2 items (Hanson,1982)
• Is this discrepancy due to deafness or the use
of ASL?
 Digit Span (Boutla et al. 2004)
• What about Hearing Native signers?
Stimuli presented in English: 7 items
Stimuli presented in ASL: 5 items
• Could there be a phonological similarity effect
in signs?
Stimuli using ASL letters instead of ASL numbers
Results: Item recall in ASL is still less than English
 Digit Span (Boutla et al. 2004)
• Are there differences in working memory capacity
between deaf and hearing people?
Test this by presenting word lists and asking subjects to
recall items using a self-generated sentence. Does not
have to be in order
• Results:
Hearing= 3.22 items
Deaf= 2.94 items
• No differences in working memory resources
between deaf and hearing people
 Digit Span
Bavelier, Boutla, and colleagues (2006):
Differences in capacity is due to modality
differences
Wilson and Emmorey (2006a): Differences in
capacity is due to articulatory timing effects.
Signs take longer to produce physically than to
speak. So therefore we see lower span
capacity in deaf.
 Serial Recall of Digits (Koo et al. 2008)
5 groups of different communication and sensory
experiences
1. Hearing non-signers = Presented verbally
2. Hearing ASL users = Presented verbally
3. Deaf ASL users = Presented using signs
4. Deaf Oral users = Presented orally
5. Deaf Cuers = Presented using Cued Speech
Digit Stimuli:
1. Verbally presented in native language
2. Visually presented on computer
 Serial Recall of Digits
Digit Span

30
* *
25 n.s.
Raw Scores

20

Verbal
15
Visual

10

0
H HA DA DO DC

Koo et al., (2008)

 Serial Recall of Digits
• No significant differences between verbal and
visual presentation of the digit stimuli
• Deaf cuers, deaf oral users, and deaf signers
show significantly lower recall of digits than
hearing people

Koo et al., (2008)

 Sensory Memory (Sperling, 1960)
• Iconic (visual) memory: 0.5 seconds
• Echoic (auditory) memory: 3-4 seconds

Sensory Working Long-Term

Memory Memory Memory
Echoic Phonological
3-4 sec Loop

Encoding Encoding
Iconic Visuo-Spatial
0.5 sec Sketch Pad

Retrieval
 Working Memory Conclusions
• Sensory information decay occurs more
rapidly in the visual medium than in the
auditory medium.
• Differences in sensory modality may have
greater effect on serial recall than language
differences.
• This effect is independent of modality of
stimuli presentation (visual or verbal) and
language (English or ASL).
 But what about children with CI?
• Do children with CI show the same working
memory capacity as their hearing peers?
• Participants:
– 26 deaf children of hearing parents: Avg age=9.1
yrs.
– CI implantation between 1-6 yrs (Avg age=2.5)
with average duration of 6.7 yrs.
– Spoken English used at home
– All attended mainstreamed schools

(Fagan et al. 2007)

 Memory in CI Children
Standardized Testing:
Vocabulary Comprehension
 Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT)
Reading measures
 Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization Test (LAC3)
 Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT-R)
 Word attack subtest of Woodcock Reading Mastery Test
(WRMT)
Working Memory
 Digit Span: Forward and Backward Spans
(Fagan et al. 2007)
 Memory in CI Children
Results
 Deaf CI children scored lower on vocabulary
comprehension than hearing peers on PPVT.
 Deaf CI children were equal to hearing peers on
WRMT, PIAT, and LAC3.
 Deaf CI children scored lower on Digit Span than
hearing peers
Consistent with other studies (Geers, 2003; Pisoni & Cleary,
2003; Dawson et al., 2002).

(Fagan et al. 2007)

 Memory in CI Children
Cochlear implants may have audiological and
linguistic benefits but working memory
capacity in children with CIs is still not
comparable to hearing norms.
Why?
Information held in working memory may be in
visual modality even in implanted children
 Summary
• Working memory is a critical component in
language development
• No differences in working memory between
deaf and hearing populations
• Performance on working memory tasks are
more influenced by modality differences in
the linguistic input than the language itself
 References
Atkinson, R.C. and Shiffrin, R.M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control
processes. In Spence, K.W. & Spence, J.T. (Eds.) The psychology of learning and motivation
(Vol 2). p. 89-195. New York: Academic Press.
Baddeley, A. & Hitch, G. (1974). Working Memory. In G.H. Bower (Ed.) The psychology of learning
and motivation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 8). p.47-89. New York: Academic Press.
Boutla, M., Supalla, T., Newport, E.L., Bavelier, D. (2004) Short-term memory span: Insights from
sign language. Nature Neuroscience, 7, p. 997-1002.
Fagan, M., Pisoni, D., Horn, D. and Dillon, C. (2007). Neuropsychological correlates of vocabulary,
reading, and working memory in deaf children with cochlear implants. Journal of Deaf
Studies and Deaf Education 12(4), p. 461-471.
Hanson, V.L. (1982) Short-term recall by deaf signers of American Sign Language: Implication of
encoding strategy for ordered recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 8, p. 572-583.
Koo, D., Crain, K., LaSasso, C., Eden, G., (2008) Phonological awareness and short-term memory in
hearing and deaf individuals of different communication backgrounds. Annals of the New
York Academy of Sciences, 1145, p. 83-99.
Wilson, M. and Emmorey, K. (2006a) Comparing sign language and speech reveals a universal
limit on short-term memory capacity. Psychological Science, 17 (8), p. 682-683.
 Contact Information
Daniel.Koo@Gallaudet.edu