Abstract
PurposeSpeechreading (lipreading) is a correlate of reading ability in both deaf and hearing children. We investigated whether the relationship between speechreading and single-word reading is mediated by phonological awareness in deaf and hearing children.MethodIn two separate studies, 66 deaf children and 138 hearing children, aged 5–8 years old, were assessed on measures of speechreading, phonological awareness, and single-word reading. We assessed the concurrent relationships between latent variables measuring speechreading, phonological awareness, and single-word reading.ResultsIn both deaf and hearing children, there was a strong relationship between speechreading and single-word reading, which was fully mediated by phonological awareness.ConclusionsThese results are consistent with ideas from previous studies that visual speech information contributes to the development of phonological representations in both deaf and hearing children, which, in turn, support learning to read. Future longitudinal and training studies are required to establish whether these relationships reflect causal effects.
Highlights
The concurrent relationship between speechreading and single-word reading ability in young deaf children is mediated by phonological awareness
We found moderate to strong correlations between speechreading and phonological awareness in deaf children and in hearing children, despite the fact they have full access to auditory speech information
We found that the relationship between speechreading and single-word reading ability in both young deaf and hearing children was fully mediated by phonological awareness
Summary
It is important to note, that the sample shows a very wide range of single-word reading scores. Our primary aim was to assess whether the relationship between speechreading and single-word reading is mediated by phonological awareness. The Phonological Awareness latent variable was added as a mediating factor between Speechreading and Reading. The indirect effect, via Phonological Awareness, was statistically reliable using bootstrapped standard errors (0.648, 95% CI [0.361, 0.860]) Overall, this model provided an excellent fit to the data, χ2(18, n = 66) = 23.302, p = .179, comparative fit index = 0.990, Tucker– Lewis index = 0.984, RMSEA = 0.067, 95% CI [0.000, 0.136], SRMR = 0.034, and accounts for 75% of the variance in single-word reading ability
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