Backward and forward recall by deaf and hearing children

Previous work showed that deaf children probably used visual codes for the short-term storage of verbal material. Such a visual code might lack the unidirectional character of a linguistic one. If so, reversed recall of visually presented material might be easier for subjects using visual images, and the deaf might therefore have an advantage in backward recall. Deaf and hearing children matched on forward letter span were tested for the backward recall of six item letter series, and the hypothesis was confirmed for order but not for item errors.