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I'm thrilled to be here at Gallaudet,
to come back to my alma mater.
I have my masters in linguistics.
I graduated from here, and then my Ph.D. in psychology,
so it's nice to be back home.
[Effect of Audism and Linguisticism on the Developing Deaf Person]
As has already been explained, I work in RIT at the Deaf Studies Lab.
And you can see my team here on the slide.
[Audism - "being Deaf is bad" Dr. Tom Humphries]
Many of you may have heard of the term "audism."
It's not a new term,
and it was coined in 1977 by Dr. Tom Humphries.
He wrote about that term in his Ph.D. dissertation.
And by audism he meant some attitude which was prejudiced against people
according to their hearing status.
So some idea that deaf people were broken, needed to be fixed, or were inferior.
And that if you wanted to be happy in this world,
you really needed to be hearing.
[Linguisticism - "teaching Deaf children ASL is bad" - Dr. MJ Bienvenu]
Linguisticism is related to audism, and the first time I heard that term
was when Dr. MJ Bienvenu was presenting at RIT -
she was a keynote speaker at one of our conferences -
and she mentioned linguisticism.
And that struck a chord with me,
and it's about some prejudice against language,
believing that one language is inferior to another.
Many people do not believe, for example,
that ASL is the equivalent or has the same status
or is able to express the same things as English, for example.
There are many studies which have been carried out in this field,
but I want to talk about one study today which really looks specifically
at the notions of audism and linguisticism.
And I want to talk about the notion of resilience -
psychological resilience.
What do I mean by that?
[- stress, - conflicts, - disagreements, - bad experiences, - adversities
resilience (arrow up; person)]
Of course, all people experience stress, disagreements, adversities.
That's the nature of life.
If you don't have much resilience,
you have a weak resilience, then let's see what happens.
[- stress, - conflicts, - disagreements, - bad experiences, - adversities
weak (arrow down, person)
(arrow from adversities to heart)]
It really knocks you back,
and it's hard to get back on your feet and really bounce back
and get on with your daily life.
It's very problematic.
However, if you have some strong sense of resilience,
what does that look like?
[Strong (arrow down), resilience (arrow up)
(arrows bounce back)]
Of course, it still knocks you back,
it's just that you have the wherewithal to get back on your own two feet
and carry on living your everyday life.
So resilience is that power to bounce back.
And it's very important for school, for universities,
for success in life and mental well being.
And there are two other important terms I really want to talk about now.
[Protective Factors - Stronger (arrow down, arrows right and left)]
[Risk Factors - Weaker (arrow down, arrows in from right and left)
Protective Factors Risk Factors]
In terms of resilience,
thinking about protective factors and risk factors.
Protective factors are those things that help us develop a strong resilience.
And risk factors are those things which cause our resilience to be weakened.
So I just want to ask you all a question.
[is being deaf a risk factor?]
Do we think that being deaf itself is a risk factor?
Well, the team I work with don't believe it to be the case.
There are many successful deaf people out there in the big, wide world
who have excellent qualities of life.
They earn more money than the average Joe.
There are very successful deaf people in education
that do much better than their hearing peers.
So it doesn't appear deafness is a risk factor.
[we hypothesize that internalizing audism is the risk factor]
But we would say that some kind of idea of internalized audism is a risk factor.
That idea that you're continually exposed to being needed to be fixed
or that you're broken,
if you internalize those ideas - that you need to be fixed -
then we feel that that, in and of itself, is the risk factor.
So we wanted to see if we could set up an experiment
to test if that were the case.
[Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale Connor & Davidson, 2003
measures: - sense of personal competence, - trust in one's instincts,
- tolerance of negative effects, - sense of social support,
- positive acceptance of change, ... ]
Well, I suppose the big question is: How do you measure resilience?
But there are a number of tests out there,
and we used one which has been used with teenagers and young adults
to ask them a variety of questions about their resilience;
and it's a multiple choice, just a pen and paper exercise.
So we used that task.
[(slide continued) - action-oriented approach to problem solving]
So I suppose the next question is: How do we measure internalized audism?
And this is kind of where the fun starts.
[Deaf Implicit Association Test Hauser, Listman, & Kurz, 2013]
In the research field of social cognition, they have a variety of different methods,
one of which actually is used to measure racism, sexism,
and other kinds of prejudices.
So we borrowed that mainstream test and actually tried to adapt it for audism.
It's a computer-delivered test.
And the idea is that you push computer buttons,
and you measure reaction times.
And this gives you an idea of what it looks like.
[GOOD (pictures), BAD (pictures)]
So I want you to remember these pictures.
There's one set of pictures there which says something good,
and there's another set of pictures which demonstrate bad things.
So please take a good look.
So if we now look at the screen,
you can see we have good on one side and bad on the other.
So if you see something that's good,
I want you to point to the side which represents good.
And if you see something bad,
I want you to point to the side that represents bad.
[Good (left) Bad (right) (picture - hugging)]
Okay, so that's good. Well done, people, you're with me.
[Good (left) Bad (right) (picture - punching person)]
And that's bad. I can see you get it.
Okay, so here's a little practice for you.
[(Different pictures flashing one at a time)]
Well done, everybody!
It was quite fun to watch you all pointing into empty space.
So now let's play with another idea.
[Deaf (pictures), Hearing (pictures)]
If we think about the idea of deaf and hearing people,
you don't have to remember the faces,
but if it's a blue-framed picture, then it means they're deaf,
and if it's a yellow-framed picture, it means they're hearing.
Okay?
[Deaf (left) Hearing (right) (blue-framed picture)]
So I'm going to do exactly the same as before,
only I want you to point in the space that represents deaf,
and point in the space that represents hearing.
Okay, here we go.
[(Yellow-framed picture)]
Yep, you're with me.
Well done.
That was the practice.
[(Flashing pictures with different colored frames)]
Okay, that was actually the practice.
Now I want to start the real experiment, which has another layer of complexity.
We're going to try and mix the two conditions
of deaf and hearing, and good and bad.
If you see a picture - a drawn picture which is good or bad -
you need to point to good or bad,
and if it's framed, blue or yellow, deaf or hearing.
[(left) Deaf, Good, (right) Hearing, Bad (blue-framed picture)]
Right. That one's deaf. Well done.
[(punching)]
Over here is bad, yes.
Let's proceed with the next stage.
[(pictures: yellow frame)
(holding flower)
(blue frame)
(yellow frame)
(snake bite)
(hugging)
(blue frame)
(hugging knees)]
Now I'm going to run the test again, but now the fun starts.
I'm going to swap where good and bad is.
[(left) Deaf, Bad, (right) Heading, Good (picture: punching)
And now bad is to your right.
Okay, so let's have a go.
[(holding flower)
(yellow frame)
(car in flood)
(blue frame)
(hugging)
(blue frame)
(snake bite)
(yellow frame)]
The way we score that is quite complicated,
and we have a fancy algorithm to analyze the data,
and the whole point is the reaction time.
We administered this test to a variety of college students.
It's a computer-based test,
and we analyzed their reaction times in the different conditions.
[Results. Scale: 5 "Deaf = Good" bias to -5 "Deaf = Bad" bias]
We were interested in when "Deaf" and "Good"
co-occurred on the same side,
whether that correlated with somebody having a strong sense of Deaf being good,
and that was an internalized value.
And if we had "Deaf" and "Bad" on the same side,
then those people obviously would have a slower reaction.
However, if somebody had internalized the notion that Deaf was bad,
they'd have a quicker reaction time when Deaf and bad were on the same side.
And we were trying to see if we could use this
to rate what people's internalized attitudes were,
whether they identified Deaf as good or Deaf as bad.
So we split the group in half,
and we know that one side has internalized the good concept,
the other bad.
So those who would say Deaf was good, we would say had some protective factors,
strong resilience.
Those who thought Deaf was bad, we would say they had internalized audism.
Now, you can remember
that we also had that task that we administered,
the multiple choice, looking at resilience.
Obviously, If they scored high, that meant they had strong resilience;
a low score meant weak resilience.
[Resilience Scale Score. Resisted Audism, Internalized Audism]
And we were interested to see how these correlated together.
And what was interesting is those who saw Deaf as good
scored the same level of resilience as their hearing peers.
[(Same scale) Strong resilience = 80, Weak resilience = 60.
internalizing audism is a risk factor]
Which was not the same for those who saw Deaf as bad.
They clearly had internalized audism and had weak resilience.
So what appeared to be the protective factors?
For us, we thought actually looking at Deaf Studies was an important field.
And we often see notions of use of sign language,
involvement in the Deaf community,
and we wanted to see if those were relevant to our groups.
[our hypothesis:
1. Deaf acculturation 2. sign language skills]
So again, let's think about how we can measure notions like Deaf culture.
There is a test which is actually developed by a colleague
here at Gallaudet University, [Deb Maxwell-Macaw]
in the psychology department,
and it asks questions about your values, your behaviors,
your involvement in the Deaf community,
your involvement in mainstream events, for example.
And again, in this graph, we saw if there was a high score,
you were highly involved in the Deaf community,
had Deaf cultural aspects about you,
and a low score, not so much.
[Graph - Deaf acculturation is a protective factor]
We found that those who had high levels of [resilience]
were people who socialized within the Deaf community.
[American Sign Language Sentence Reproduction Test
Hauser, Paludneviciene, Supalla, & Bavelier, 2008]
We were also interested in looking at sign skills.
A team of us were involved in developing a sign skills test.
[Dr. Raylene Paludneviciene
from the psychology department here at Gallaudet was involved in that.]
And on this [scale] you can see high levels of ASL fluency
and low levels of fluency.
[Graph - y axis: ASL Score, x axis: Resisted vs. Internalized Audism
Sign language skills is a protective factor]
Those who had stronger levels of [resilience and resisted audism]
also had better signing skills.
So it seems that signing seems to be a protective factor.
[Deaf Capital Theory Listman, Rogers, & Hauser, 2011]
So why is it important to use sign language
and be involved in the Deaf community?
Well, our theory is it's about Deaf capital.
And by "capital" I mean knowledge and skills
that you get from the Deaf community.
It's almost like a toolbox that you can carry around with you.
When you meet other Deaf people,
you gain knowledge from their experience of navigating the world.
And so when you're out in school and something happens that's frustrating,
you have the tools with you to be able to deal with that.
[Pie charts - Parents' hearing status: Deaf parent - 4%
Mitchell & Karchmer, 2002
Parents who sign: Sign 23%, No Data 5%, No Sign 72%
Gallaudet University Research Institute 2009-2010 Data]
And you may have remembered at the beginning,
I mentioned the term "linguisticism."
I think that is the problem:
Many people don't value ASL.
We know so many deaf people are actually born without deaf parents,
and they don't have Deaf capital.
They don't have exposure to sign language.
Of hearing families, less than 25% use sign language,
which means many deaf children grow up
with very poor, impoverished language skills,
so that seems to be a risk factor.
So in summary ...
[Same pie charts.
Graph with arrows in. Internalizing Audism is a Risk Factor.
Graph with arrows out.
Deaf Acculturation and Sign Language Skills are Protective Factors
Conclusion: audism = Bad; linguisticism = Bad;
Deaf acculturation = Good; learning sign language = Good]
The reason, I think, audism and linguisticism still happens today
is because society doesn't know
that ASL and involvement in the Deaf community
is important to us.
We need to educate them.
We need to mentor young deaf children,
young deaf adults,
so that they can in turn educate, lead,
educate other people and become leaders of change.
Thank you very much.