Causal coherence

As I understand it, causal coherence is the ability to link cause and effect not only in writing but as a cognitive exercise.  In other words, it has two steps: making the link between cause and effect in the mind, and then expressing it.  This paper, “Causal Coherence in Deaf and Hearing Students’ Written Narratives“, looks at differences in how Deaf and hearing students do this in writing.  An interesting sidenote is that the stimulus, “Frog, Where Are You?” is standard in working with a variety of language populations and ages in part because it has no text.

Please note that the word is CAUSAL not CASUAL.  This mistake drives me nuts.  The paper is not about casual coherence, as if structures that hold a narrative together are informal.  It is a study of how Deaf students’ writing reveals their thinking of cause and effect.

The role of gesture in learning

I am a fan of Susan Goldin-Meadow.  First off, she has a great name.  Beyond that, she asks the most intriguing questions, writes clearly, and develops good research design.  If that weren’t enough, her field specifically fascinates me: the confluence of gesture, language, cognition and learning.  Fortunately, she’s produced a tremendous body of work.

This article, The Role of Gesture in Learning: Do Children Use Their Hands to Change Their Minds?, in the same issue of Journal of Cognition and Development as the previous post on ToM, looks at the role of gesture in teaching and learning.  It doesn’t look at interpreting but after reading it think of this question: If gesture has such an important role in learning, what happens when the teaching is interpreter-mediated?  Is there a change if an intepreter produces a rendition which is text without gesture?

Theories of mind in transition

One of the challenges of interpreting for Deaf patients is that as children they are delayed in developing Theory of Mind (ToM).  It is my experience that the development is not as straightforward under some circumstances for deaf children as it is for hearing children; whether this is a deficit or difference I am not qualified to comment on.  Of course, Deaf people are not a homogenous population and there are a number of factors that contribute to the delay.  Some seem to be lack of linguistic input, co-occurring disability, imperfect early socialization and possibly attachment.

Understanding medical interpreters

It seems appropriate to start with the oldest articles in my storehouse first and it turns out that this is one of the ones I value most.  The article is “Understanding Medical Interpreters: Reconceptualizing Bilingual Health Communication” from Health Communication, September 2006 (vol 20, No 2, pp. 177-186) and it’s by Elaine Hsieh.  She’s written quite a bit about medical interpreting but seems not to be widely known.  She deserves to be; she’s got some really intetresting perspectives.   Among them is the fact that she recognizes the interpreter’s influence as a participant in an interpreter-mediated encounter.