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From: James.Womack@f14.n300.z1.fidonet.org (James Womack)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Mensa, IQ and Deafies
Message-ID: <15828@handicap.news>
Date: 30 May 91 03:55:20 GMT
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Index Number: 15828

[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]

For many Deaf people, when you give an IQ test, you are not testing
what you might think you are. The test is in English to begin with.
The Deaf person may have an educational, familial, and cultural background
in which English was not naturally acquired or mastered. This is typical
of many Deafies due to educational systems insisting on hearizing the
Deaf via audition training whether they actually benefit sufficiently
from it or not and ignoring the need to develop a first language on
which to base the teaching of English as a second language. So what
you get is a Deaf person without real mastery of English in most cases.
Now your test is in english remember. So what is happening is that
you are testing that person's ability (or inability) to decipher the
language used in the test no matter what the content area is. despite
the Deaf persons potential or exisiting cognitive abilities in a given
area, they may not and often are not exhibited due to to the test being
whatit is. May Deafies would not qualify for Mensa by default in this
case.

An interesting thing is that once during a SAT at school, I misunderstood
my instructions. A group of "low verbal" Deaf kids were being tested
in reading. I signed teh test instructions and the test stories and
questions. For better than half the test I did this. It was brought
ot my attention that this particular group taking this particular test
was not to receive such a presentation of the test material. I stopped
doing this immediately. The kids were anguished because of it. The
complained that only when I signed did they understand what the test
was all about. Out of curiosity, I looked at the test answers before
and after my blunder. Many of the most "low verbal" students provided
something like 78% accuracy on test answers for questions signed and
dipped to something like 26% for the sections not signed. What does
this prove? Well, beyond the fact that I need to be more careful about
my instructions, it can mean many things. That the kids should be tested
via ASL rather than English to get a real knowledge of their abilities.
Or it might mean some else entirely. For me it was an astonishing experience.
One that I hope to research some day.

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