Learning by models from texts and from videos: where deafs differ from hearings.

Research Objectives: Our study is concerned with learning from texts and videos in deaf individuals, within the Mental Model Theory framework. The theory of learning by mental models and the well-known cognitive characteristics of deaf individuals, lead us to three predictions: 1) deaf individuals are comparable to hearing individuals in learning from visual material; 2) signing deafs exploit visual material more than oral deaf and hearing individuals. Design: Six oral deafs, six signing deafs, and six hearing individuals participated in the experiment. They watched two videos and read two texts concerning weather conditions. Then, they were invited to recollect as many information as they could. Method: Half of the participants dealt first with the videos, and half first with the texts; the order of presentation of both the videos and the texts within each block was counterbalanced over all participants. Results: Our predictions were confirmed. Conclusions: The results enforce one main assumption of our theory: signing deafs’ high distributed visual attention favours learning from visual material.