We examined the performance of students with and without hearing loss in tasks measuring three cognitive processes: planning, simultaneous processing, and successive processing. Students with prelingual hearing losses, 10 and IS years of age, and hearing students comparable in age and grade were given a verbal and a nonverbal task from each of the three types of cognitive processes. Both qualitative and quantitative scores were analyzed. Results showed that the students with hearing loss had an advantage at age 10 in nonverbal simultaneous and successive tasks, but a disadvantage in the verbal tasks compared to the hearing students. However, at age 13, students with hearing loss performed poorly in both verbal and nonverbal tasks. In regard to planning tasks, the students with hearing loss not only scored lower compared to the hearing students but also appeared to be using inadequate strategies and investing less effort. Educational implications of these findings are discussed, as is the value of a longitudinal study in determining whether their planning difficulty was developmental or not.

The Stroop and Posner tasks, used as measures of expressive and receptive attention, were administered to two age groups of deaf and hearing children. The purpose was to determine if developmental age would affect subjects' performance and to compare performance of the deaf with hearing subjects. The mean age for the younger deaf subjects was 9.9 years and the younger hearing subjects was 9.4 years. The mean age for the older deaf and hearing subjects was 13.7 years each. The results revealed higher interference in the Stroop tasks for the younger deaf and hearing groups than for the older groups. There were no significant differences between deaf and hearing subjects' performance on the Stroop and Posner tasks when they were of similar age. The results indicate that the deaf had no difficulty compared to the hearing in either aspect of selective attention. It is suggested that separate norms for the Stroop and Posner tasks be developed based on developmental age.

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