Zamsha A. Psychological determinants of intellectual development of hearing impairment adolescents

This thesis research looks into the ways to foster the intellectual development of teenagers with hearing impairments, as part of their personality development. The initial literature review enabled to identify the conceptual and terminological field for the research study. In this research, the notion of 'intellectual development' means a long-term process of irreversible, natural progressive changes in the intellect area, which are demonstrated through its quantitative, qualitative, structural and operational transformations. The ability of individual to solve different types of problems serves as the criterion to determine the level of his/her intellectual development. In the context of this research study the notion of a 'determinant' is used to mean a source that induces and stimulates progressive changes in the intellect area. The literature review was used as a basis to help distinguish three key approaches to identifying the determinants of intellectual development in ontogenesis, such as genetic, social and subject-related. The empirical study revealed that, compared to their hearing peers (n=37), 12-15 year olds with hearing impairments (n=76) are characterized by the dominance of non-verbal intellect over verbal intellect, lower level of general information as well as lower levels of conceptual thinking and creativity. The comparative analysis demonstrated that intellectual development is mainly determined by socio-cultural (type of family background), rather than sensory factors (degree of hearing impairment). For example, better developed conceptual thinking and creativeness were noted in hearing-impaired teenagers whose parents are deaf (n=31), compared to their peers from hearing families (n=45). Alongside this, the study showed that only some operational components of conceptual thinking are better developed in teenagers with hearing impairments (n=38), as compared to deaf subjects (n=38). It was found that, in contrast to their hearing peers, teenagers with hearing impairments have less developed psychological determinants of intellectual development. It was established, that the nature of correlations between intellectual development indicators and psychological determinants was different for teenagers with hearing impairments and their hearing peers in terms of content and the character of the relationships.Based on the findings from the empirical study, a psychological model was designed to strengthen the psychological determinants of intellectual development in teenagers with hearing impairments. The piloting results proved its effectiveness in fostering the internal locus of motivation, cognitive motive and the ability for reflective self-regulation, which contributed to better indicators of creativity and conceptual thinking in teenagers with hearing impairments.