It is frequently assumed that by virtue of their hearing losses, deaf students are visual learners. Deaf individuals have some visual-spatial advantages relative to hearing individuals, but most have been are linked to use of sign language rather than auditory deprivation. How such cognitive differences might affect academic performance has been investigated only rarely. This study examined relations among deaf college students’ language and visual-spatial abilities, mathematics problem solving, and hearing thresholds. Results extended some previous findings and clarified others. Contrary to what might be expected, hearing students exhibited visual-spatial skills equal to or better than deaf students. Scores on a Spatial Relations task were associated with better mathematics problem solving. Relations among the several variables, however, suggested that deaf students are no more likely to be visual learners than hearing students and that their visual-spatial skill may be related more to their hearing than to sign language skills.

Four experiments, each building on the results of the previous ones, explored the effects of several manipulations on learning and the accuracy of metacognitive judgments among deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students. Experiment 1 examined learning and metacognitive accuracy from classroom lectures with or without prior scaffolding in the form of a description of main points and concepts. Experiment 2 compared the benefits of scaffolding when material was read versus when it was presented as a lecture signed for DHH students and spoken for hearing students. Experiment 3 compared scaffolding provided in the form of main points versus vocabulary, and Experiment 4 examined effects of material familiarity and a delay between study and test. Results indicated that although all students had a tendency to overestimate their performance, hearing students learned more and were more accurate in their metacognitive judgments than DHH students. Content familiarity improved the accuracy of metacognitive judgments by both DHH and hearing students, but the delay manipulation was effective only for hearing students. Consistent with other recent findings, DHH students learned as much from reading as they did from signed instruction. Differences between DHH and hearing students may indicate the need for explicit instruction for DHH students in academically relevant skills acquired incidentally by hearing students.

This study explored relations of print exposure, academic achievement, and reading habits among 100 deaf and 100 hearing college students. As in earlier studies, recognition tests for book titles and magazine titles were used as measures of print exposure, college entrance test scores were used as measures of academic achievement, and students provided self-reports of reading habits. Deaf students recognized fewer magazine titles and fewer book titles appropriate for reading levels from kindergarten through Grade 12 while reporting more weekly hours of reading. As in previous studies with hearing college students, the title recognition test proved a better predictor of deaf and hearing students' English achievement than how many hours they reported reading. The finding that the recognition tests were relatively more potent predictors of achievement for deaf students than hearing students may reflect the fact that deaf students often obtain less information through incidental learning and classroom presentations.

This study explored deaf and hearing university students' metacognitive awareness with regard to comprehension difficulties during reading and classroom instruction. Utilising the Reading Awareness Inventory (Milholic, V. 1994. An inventory to pique students' metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. Journal of Reading 38: 84-6), parallel inventories were created to tap metacognitive awareness during comprehension of sign language (deaf students) and spoken language (hearing students). Overall, both deaf and hearing students appeared to have greater metacognitive awareness of ongoing comprehension and repair strategies during reading than during instruction in the classroom, but deaf students scored lower than hearing students in both modalities. Deaf students were no more likely than hearing students to report adopting inappropriate strategies, but both groups indicated they were more likely to do so in classroom contexts than during reading.