Effects of linguisticism and audism on the developing deaf person | Peter Hauser | TEDxGallaudet

Peter C. Hauser, Ph.D., is the Director of the Deaf Studies Laboratory (DSL) in the Department of American Sign Language and Interpreting Education at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology. At DSL, he studies the cognitive, language, and psychosocial aspects of the Deaf experience. DSL is also where Dr. Hauser directs the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Rochester Bridges to Doctorate program, which recruits and trains the nation's top Deaf scholars for biomedical and behavioral science careers. He is also the National Science Mentorship Leader for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning (VL2) at Gallaudet University. He has co-authored several books, published in over 40 peer reviewed journal articles, and presented his work nationally and internationally.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

[The interpretation
provided for this presentation

is live and unrehearsed.

Interpreter(s) assigned may or may not

have had materials
in advance for preparation.

Inaccuracies related
to the content of the material

may be due to imperfections
in the interpreting process.

This interpretation has not
been reviewed by the presenter.]

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.