Effect Of Mental Rotation And Working Memory Span On Figural Reasoning Ability In Deaf Students

Reasoning ability is a key factor in the development of thinking. The study on the reasoning ability ofthe deaf students psychological mechanisms’ development can help to reveal the characteristics and natureof the deaf intellectual development. In addition, a variety cognitive abilities in deaf children andadolescents are growing, figural reasoning just be able to adapt to different age deaf children. This studybased on cognitive theory, investived the development of characteristics of deaf children’s mental rotationand working memory span and the two abilities’ influence to figural reasoning.In this study, the cases were deaf students from pupil to college students. The study designed fourexperiments. The first experiment is a3（student type）×2（sexuality）×3（degree of difficulty inreasoning）design with the purpose of discussing the effect of age, sexuality, degree of difficulty on figuralreasoning. The second experiment is a3（student type）×2（sexuality）×3（rotation angle）designwith the purpose of discussing the effect of age, sexuality, rotation angle on mental rotation. The thirdexperiment is a3（student type）×2（sexuality）design with the purpose of discussing the effect of age,sexuality on working memory span. The last experiment is a2(mental rotation）×2（working memoryspan）design with the purpose of discussing the effect of mental rotation, working memory span on figuralreasoning.The research obtains following results:1.College deaf students’ figural reasoning ability is higher than middle school student’s.,middle schoolstudent’s ability is higher than pupil’s. Different level of difficulty of reasoning tasks, the correct rate withthe difficulty increases.2.College deaf students’ mental rotation ability is higher than middle school student’s.,middle schoolstudent’s ability is higher than pupil’s. Boy’s ability is higher than girls’.The bigger the rotation angle is,the longer the reaction times are.3.College deaf students’ working memory span is bigger than middle school student’s,middle schoolstudent’s working memory span is bigger than pupil’s. 4. Mental rotation ability is a important influence factor to the development of deaf students figuralreasoning ability.For correct response rate and reaction time, there is no significant difference in differentworking memory span students.5. In the figural reasoning task and mental rotation task,age is the important effect on cognitivefatigue. Sex has no influence on it.