The effects of adjunct questions in prose for deaf and hearing students at different reading levels.

In two studies, the author investigated interactions among adjunct question position, reading ability, and direct versus indirect learning outcomes for deaf postsecondary and hearing middle-school students. Adjunct questions were inserted immediately preceding or following brief sections of instructional prose for the purpose of focusing and cognitively activating the readers. Different effects were observed for deaf and hearing readers and for different levels of assessed reading ability. The findings are discussed in terms of reading ability, adjunct activities while reading prose, and direct versus indirect instructive effects.     

Attention interchanges at story-time: a case study from a deaf and hearing twin pair acquiring Swedish sign language in their deaf family

This case study longitudinally analyzes and describes the changes of attentional expressions in interchanges between a pair of fraternal twins, 1 deaf and 1 hearing, from the age of 10-40 months, and their Deaf family members. The video-observed attentional expressions of initiating and reestablishing interchange were grouped in 5 functional categories: "getting," "directing," "maintaining," "redirecting," and "checking" attention. Changes appear to be associated with development during the twins' ages of 10-13, 15-24, and 28-40 months, including the use of vision in communication. Although there are similarities in the changes of each twin's communicative initiations, there are also differences based on hearing status, personality, and use of modality. This is evident in the ways in which each twin's individual attention interchanges unfold over time; it is also connected with the parents' negotiating attention and arranging "seating positions" with them. Implications and findings for special educational purposes are discussed.     

Print exposure, reading habits, and reading achievement among deaf and hearing college students

This study explored relations of print exposure, academic achievement, and reading habits among 100 deaf and 100 hearing college students. As in earlier studies, recognition tests for book titles and magazine titles were used as measures of print exposure, college entrance test scores were used as measures of academic achievement, and students provided self-reports of reading habits. Deaf students recognized fewer magazine titles and fewer book titles appropriate for reading levels from kindergarten through Grade 12 while reporting more weekly hours of reading. As in previous studies with hearing college students, the title recognition test proved a better predictor of deaf and hearing students' English achievement than how many hours they reported reading. The finding that the recognition tests were relatively more potent predictors of achievement for deaf students than hearing students may reflect the fact that deaf students often obtain less information through incidental learning and classroom presentations.     

In search of factors in deaf and hearing children's reading comprehension

The present study examined whether specific item characteristics, such as mode of acquisition (MoA) of word meanings, make reading comprehension tests particularly difficult for deaf children. Reading comprehension data on nearly 13,000 hearing 7-to-12-year-olds and 253 deaf 7-to-20-year-olds were analyzed, divided across test levels from second to sixth grade (not necessarily corresponding to chronological age). Factor analyses across item scores suggested that, of the determinants studied, MoA--referring to the type of information (perceptual, linguistic, or both) used in word meaning acquisition--was the only factor that contributed significantly to deaf and hearing children's reading comprehension. For hearing children, MoA influenced item scores at the third- and fourth-grade levels. For the deaf children, MoA influenced item scores through the sixth-grade level.     

Language development in deaf children's interactions with deaf and hearing adults: a Dutch longitudinal study

The language development of two deaf girls and four deaf boys in Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) and spoken Dutch was investigated longitudinally. At the start, the mean age of the children was 3;5. All data were collected in video-recorded semistructured conversations between individual children and deaf and hearing adults. We investigated the lexical richness and syntactic complexity of the children's utterances in SLN and spoken Dutch, as well as language dominance and interactional participation. Richness and complexity increase over time, as well as children's participation. An important outcome is that syntactic complexity is higher in utterances with both sign and speech. SLN does not have higher outcomes on richness or complexity, but is dominant in terms of frequency of use.     

Examining metacognition in hearing and deaf/hard of hearing students: a comparative study

The metacognitive performance of 87 hearing and 20 deaf/hard of hearing students was examined. The hearing students consisted of 42 males (mean age 15.6 years) and 45 females (mean age 15.4 years). The deaf/hard of hearing students consisted of 13 males (mean age 16.9 years) and 7 females (mean age 15.9 years). Metacognition was conceptualized in terms of choosing the best response to problematic situations drawing upon problem-solving and logical reasoning skills. In the test, pictures represented various daily life interactions. There was no significant difference between hearing and deaf/hard of hearing students in metacognitive performance, nor was there a gender-based significant difference among the deaf/hard of hearing students. However, hearing female students scored significantly higher on the metacognitive test than hearing male students. Further analysis of the study findings possibly would show students' overall performance on the metacognitive test to be independent of grade point average. Analysis did show, however, a significant negative correlation between test performance and grades in Arabic among deaf/hard of hearing students.     

Effect of teacher questions on the reading comprehension of deaf children

We examined the effect of comprehension questions that require analysis, synthesis, and evaluation on the reading comprehension of deaf children. The subjects were six deaf children ranging in age from 10 years, months to 12 years, 5 months. They were divided into four reading groups for the study. Quantitative analysis of the children's responses to comprehension questions indicated that the children could analyze, synthesize, and evaluate narrative text and their ability to do so did not need to be supported by answering questions related to story details. Qualitative analysis indicated that the children had some difficulty with seven reading tasks: locating pertinent information, applying relevant and accurate background knowledge, expressing themselves unambiguously, understanding the intent of the question, not relying too heavily or too little on background knowledge, considering consequential details, and providing sufficient answers.     

Parenting stress and social support in hearing mothers of deaf and hearing children: a longitudinal study

This longitudinal study investigated the impact of child deafness on mothers' stress, size of social networks, and satisfaction with social support. Twenty-three hearing mothers of deaf children and 23 hearing mothers of hearing children completed a series of self-report questionnaires when their children were 22 months, 3, and 4 years old. When children were 22 months, more mothers of deaf children reported pessimism about their children's achieving self-sufficiency and concerns about their children's communication abilities than did mothers of hearing children. When their children were 3 and 4 years old, mothers of deaf and hearing children did not differ in their reports of general parenting stress, as measured by the Parenting Stress Index (PSI). Likewise, mothers' ratings of satisfaction with social support were not affected by child deafness, nor did they change developmentally. Mothers of deaf and hearing children did differ in the types of support networks utilized. Mothers of deaf 22-month-olds reported significantly larger professional support networks, while mothers of hearing children reported significantly larger general support networks across all child ages. Mothers' feelings of stress and satisfaction with social support were very stable across the 2 years examined. The results suggest that most mothers of deaf children do not feel a high level of general parenting stress or dissatisfaction with their lives and support networks. However, mothers of deaf children are likely to feel stress in areas specific to deafness. In addition, because parenting stress was highly stable, special efforts should be made to intervene when mothers of deaf children are expressing high levels of stress.     

How speechreading contributes to reading in a transparent ortography: the case of Spanish deaf people

The aim of the study is to describe the performance of deaf and hearing people while speechreading Spanish, a language with transparent orthography, and to relate this skill to reading efficiency. Three groups of 27 participants each were recruited: a group of deaf participants, a chronological age‐matched hearing group and a reading age‐matched hearing group. All three were tested on vocabulary, phonological awareness, reading speed, speechreading and, only in the group of deaf people, speech intelligibility. The results indicate that deaf people are better speechreaders than younger hearing people, but they are no better than their age‐matched peers, and that speechreading is related to reading only in deaf people.     

The experience of story reading: deaf children and hearing mothers' interactions at story time

THE STUDY EXAMINED scaffolding interactions between deaf children and hearing mothers in which story reading was used as a tool to aid in the development of narrative comprehension and linguistic reasoning. The dyadic interactions were examined from the perspective of the theoretical works of Vygotsky (1934/1962, 1978, 1929/1981, 1960/1981). The sample group consisted of 7 dyads of hearing mothers and their deaf children ages 4.2 to 9.5 years. The mothers signed a story to their children. The dyadic interactions reflected the different levels of scaffolding and functioning within the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1934/1962, 1978). The researchers found that story reading provides an excellent framework for both cognitive and emotional growth within the parent/child dyad. Mothers who engaged their children in mutual dialogue also used elaboration. This was reflected in their children's linguistic reasoning.     

The relationship between reading achievement and morphological word analysis in deaf and hearing students matched for reading level

This study extends the findings of Gaustad, Kelly, Payne, and Lylak (2002), which showed that deaf college students and hearing middle school students appeared to have approximately the same morphological knowledge and word segmentation skills. Because the average grade level reading abilities for the two groups of students were also similar, those research findings suggested that deaf students' morphological development was progressing as might be expected relative to reading level. This study further examined the specific relationship between morphologically based word identification skills and reading achievement levels, as well as differences in the error patterns of deaf and hearing readers. Comparison of performance between pairs of deaf college students and hearing middle school students matched for reading achievement level shows significant superiority of younger hearing participants for skills relating especially to the meaning of derivational morphemes and roots, and the segmentation of words containing multiple types of morphemes. Group subtest comparisons and item analysis comparisons of specific morpheme knowledge and word segmentation show clear differences in the morphographic skills of hearing middle school readers over deaf college students, even though they were matched and appear to read at the same grade levels, as measured by standardized tests.     

Spelling without phonology: A study of deaf and hearing children

To what extent does phonology play a role in spelling English words? The written responses of deaf students and groups of hearing children to five tasks were subjected to quantitative and qualitative analyses. The first three tasks were used to see if deaf students utilized phonology when they generated their own words and to compare their spelling performance with that of hearing subjects. The fourth and fifth tasks were designed to compare the spelling performance of deaf and hearing subjects when they were required to reproduce visually presented common words. Results showed that deaf students, who were chronologically much older, were not better spellers than hearing children from the fifth grade. Analysis of data revealed little evidence that the deaf students involved in the present study utilize phonology in spelling. Nor did word-specific visual memory for entire words appears to play a role in spelling by deaf students. Rote visual memory for letter patterns and sequences of letters within words, however, appears to play a role in the spelling by deaf students. It is concluded that sensitivity to the stochastic-dependent probabilities of letter sequences may aid spelling up to certain point but phonology is essential for spelling words whose structure is morphophonemically complex.

     

The signed reading fluency of students who are deaf/hard of hearing

Reading fluency in deaf children whose primary mode of communication is visual, whether English-like or American Sign Language, is difficult to measure since most measures of fluency require a child to read aloud. This article opens the discussion of a new construct, namely, signed reading fluency (i.e., rendering of printed text in a visually fluent manner) in children with hearing loss whose primary means of expressive language includes some form of sign. Further, it describes the development of an assessment rubric to measure signed reading fluency. A comparison of fluency scores and scores on tests of vocabulary and text comprehension of 29 middle school students who attended a school for the deaf indicated that signed reading fluency, as defined and measured by this instrument, correlates highly both with word and passage comprehension.     

Implications of utilizing a phonics-based reading curriculum with children who are deaf or hard of hearing

Extensive literature has reiterated the reading difficulties of students who are deaf or hard of hearing. Building and expanding upon the work of B. J. Trezek and K. W. Malmgren, this study demonstrated that given 1 year of instruction from a phonics-based reading curriculum supplemented by Visual Phonics, kindergarten and first-grade students who were deaf or hard of hearing could demonstrate improvements in beginning reading skills as measured by standardized assessments of (a) word reading, (b) pseudoword decoding, and (c) reading comprehension. Furthermore, the acquisition of beginning reading skills did not appear to be related to degree of hearing loss. In this study, students with various degrees of hearing loss benefited equally well from this phonics-based reading curriculum supplemented by Visual Phonics.     

Concurrent correlates and predictors of reading and spelling achievement in deaf and hearing school children

Seven- and eight-year-old deaf children and hearing children of equivalent reading age were presented with a number of tasks designed to assess reading, spelling, productive vocabulary, speechreading, phonological awareness, short-term memory, and nonverbal intelligence. The two groups were compared for similarities and differences in the levels of performance and in the predictors of literacy. Multiple regressions showed that both productive vocabulary and speechreading were significant predictors of reading for the deaf children after hearing loss and nonverbal intelligence had been accounted for. However, spelling ability was not associated with any of the other measures apart from reading. For hearing children, age was the main determinant of reading and spelling ability (due to selection criterion). Possible explanations for the role of speechreading and productive vocabulary in deaf children's reading and the differences between the correlates of literacy for deaf and hearing children are discussed.     

Using visual phonics to supplement beginning reading instruction for students who are deaf or hard of hearing

The purpose of the current study is to expand upon the effectiveness of using Visual Phonics in conjunction with Direct Instruction reading programs (B. J. Trezek & K. W. Malmgren, 2005; B. J. Trezek & Y. Wang, 2006) and to explore the results of utilizing Visual Phonics to supplement another phonics-based reading curriculum for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. Twenty students with various degrees of hearing loss in kindergarten and first grade as well as 4 teachers participated in the study. Results of the investigation reveal that, given 1 year of instruction from a phonics-based reading curriculum supplemented by Visual Phonics, kindergarten and first-grade students who are deaf or hard of hearing can demonstrate statistically significant improvements in beginning reading skills as measured by standardized assessments.