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Abstract Both deaf and hearing readers use morphological awareness skills to decode and comprehend printed English. Deaf readers, for whom phonological awareness is a relative weakness while orthographic sensitivity is a strength, may have a different relationship with morphology than similarly skilled hearing readers. This study investigated the impact of various reading sub-skills—spelling, vocabulary size, morphological awareness, and phonological awareness—on reading comprehension for deaf and hearing adult readers. Morphological awareness had a stronger relationship with reading comprehension for deaf than hearing readers, particularly for deaf readers with advanced morphological skills. Morphology and vocabulary were also more strongly related for the deaf group, indicating that deaf readers leverage morphology to expand their word knowledge. Overall, the findings highlight the unique and significant role of morphological awareness in the skilled deaf reader’s “toolbox” and underscore the importance of morphological instruction in supporting the reading development of deaf individuals.
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Contribution of Lexical Quality and Sign Language Variables to Reading Comprehension
The lexical quality hypothesis proposes that the quality of phonological, orthographic, and semantic representations impacts reading comprehension. In Study 1, we evaluated the contributions of lexical quality to reading comprehension in 97 deaf and 98 hearing adults matched for reading ability. While phonological awareness was a strong predictor for hearing readers, for deaf readers, orthographic precision and semantic knowledge, not phonology, predicted reading comprehension (assessed by two different tests). For deaf readers, the architecture of the reading system adapts by shifting reliance from (coarse-grained) phonological representations to high-quality orthographic and semantic representations. In Study 2, we examined the contribution of American Sign Language (ASL) variables to reading comprehension in 83 deaf adults. Fingerspelling (FS) and ASL comprehension skills predicted reading comprehension. We suggest that FS might reinforce orthographic-to-semantic mappings and that sign language comprehension may serve as a linguistic basis for the development of skilled reading in deaf signers.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1918556
- PAR ID:
- 10481717
- Publisher / Repository:
- Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education
- Volume:
- 27
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 1081-4159
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 355 to 372
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- fingerspelling, American Sign Language,
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enac018
