Semantic organization in deaf and hearing subjects

Hierarchical cluster analysis of data from the sorting of noun words was used to compare semantic structures in 63 profoundly deaf and 63 hearing adolescents. In the first study, performance differed only for a set of words referring to sounds, where deaf persons have no experience, and not for a set of common noun words and pictures. In the second study, differences between matched sets of high- and low-imagery words were comparable for 63 deaf and 63 hearing subjects. It is concluded that deaf subjects manifested abstract hierarchical relations and were not dependent on visual mediators or hindered by the absence of acoustic mediators.This investigation was supported in part by National Institutes of Health Research Grant NS-09590-03 from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke and in part by a Faculty Research Grant from Bowling Green State University.Portions of Study 1 were previously reported at the Eighty-first Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Montreal, 1973.