Enhancing the Induction Skill of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children with Virtual Reality Technology

Many researchers have found that for reasoning and reaching a reasoned conclusion, particularly when the process of induction is required, deaf and hard-of-hearing children have unusual difficulty. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the practice of rotating virtual reality (VR) three-dimensional (3D) objects will have a positive effect on the ability of deaf and hard-of-hearing children to use inductive processes when dealing with shapes. Three groups were involved in the study: (1) experimental group, which included 21 deaf and hard-of-hearing children, who played a VR 3D game; (2) control group I, which included 23 deaf and hard-of-hearing children, who played a similar two-dimensional (2D) game (not VR game); and (3) control group II of 16 hearing children for whom no intervention was introduced. The results clearly indicate that practicing with VR 3D spatial rotations significantly improved inductive thinking used by the experimental group for shapes as compared with the first control group, who did not significantly improve their performance. Also, prior to the VR 3D experience, the deaf and hard-of-hearing children attained lower scores in inductive abilities than the children with normal hearing, (control group II). The results for the experimental group, after the VR 3D experience, improved to the extent that there was no noticeable difference between them and the children with normal hearing.