Post 4: Chapter 6 EI question

The gold standard for teachers is to get students to store information in their long-term memory. What role do interpreters play in what is stored in the student’s sensory register? working memory? What are some potential issues that may arise?


Educational Interpreters are one of the main people that a deaf child has interaction with throughout the school day. Therefore, interpreters play a large role in helping a student with storing information in long term memory. The student may be a very visual learner so this would change how you could interpret. For example, when interpreting a mnemonic device instead of just interpreting the words into signs, fingerspelling can be utilized. An interpreter could set up the device by spelling the device word vertically, and then going back and spelling the meanings horizontally. Another way that an interpreter could help a visual learner is to write it down so that the student could see the concept. If the child were more of a kinesthetic learner then the interpreter could have the child sign the concept with her.An issues that may arise in storing memory may be that if the concept relies on hearing a deaf child would not understand or would have a harder time understanding. An example of this would be using alliteration for a concept, which would not work at all for a deaf student. Songs could also pose an issue for deaf students and the interpreter meaning that they would not translate well into ASL.
This link is to a review on research that has been done regarding working memory and deafness.