Welcome and What’s the Buzz?
Find out what everyone is buzzing about at the 2021 Texas Symposium on Deafblind Education and join in with your thoughts and opinions via Twitter and Facebook.
The Impact of Cognitive Closure on Students who are Deafblind: Strategies for Reducing Stress, Identifying Motivators, and Increasing Active Engagement
Humans have a basic need for closure. It’s the reason why we don’t like stories with ambiguous endings, musical pieces that don’t achieve resolution with final and pleasing consonance, or tasks that repeat over and over without variation. And we know that high levels of stress and anxiety are incompatible with learning and active engagement. Recognizing how being deafblind might act as a barrier to this need for closure is an important step toward addressing the problem. In addition, there are strategies that can easily be adopted to help mitigate the negative effects of this ambiguity and uncertainty, and elements of closure that can be implemented to support this basic human need. Maurice Belote, Director of California Deaf- Blind Services, shares his thoughts about this topic with our participants.
Panel Discussion with Maurice Belote
A panel of experts in the field of deafblind education join Maurice Belote to discuss the importance of cognitive closure for individuals who are deafblind.