Development
of numerical representational skills in deaf and hearing children and adults
- Children and adults with deafness or
hearing-impairment are often found to have difficulties learning mathematics,
and have been shown to lag approximately 3 years behind their hearing
counterparts. This programme of
research aims to assess whether such difficulties are resultant upon an
early delay or deficit in the acquisition of basic number skills, such as
counting principles, and an understanding of magnitude, which may in turn
be influenced by the nature of the mental representation of numerical
information in long-term memory. We
were awarded funding from NICHD to extend this research to examine more
complex aspects of numerical processing and learning across
development. Additional research is
also being conducted to examine the development of such skills in hearing
children of differing mathematical abilities, and numerical
representations in hearing adults.
- Previous funding provided by the British Academy and the Nuffield Foundation
- Current funding: NICHD
- Collaborators: Prof. Marc Marschark (National
Technical Institute for the Deaf)
- Associated Staff: Wendy Davidson & Emily
Nordmann
Bull,
R. (2008). Deafness, numerical
Cognition, and mathematics. In M.
Marschark and P. Hauser (Eds.), Deaf
Cognition: Foundations and Outcomes. New York: Oxford.
Bull,
R., Marschark, M., & Blatto-Vallee, G. (2005). SNARC hunting: Examining number
representation in deaf students. Learning and Individual Differences, 15, 223-236.
Bull, R., Blatto-Vallee, G., & Fabich, M.
(2006). Subitizing, magnitude
representation, and magnitude retrieval in deaf and hearing adults. Journal
of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 11, 289-302.
Bull, R., & Benson, P. J. (2006). Finger length ratio (2D:4D) and the spatial
representation of magnitude. Hormones and Behavior, 50, 194-199.