Abstract
A written single word spelling to dictation test and a single word reading test were given to 68 severe-profoundly oral deaf 10-11-year-old children and 20 hearing children with a diagnosis of dyslexia. The literacy scores of the deaf children and the hearing children with dyslexia were lower than expected for children of their age and did not differ from each other. Three quarters of the spelling errors of hearing children with dyslexia compared with just over half the errors of the oral deaf group were phonologically plausible. Expressive vocabulary and speech intelligibility predicted the percentage of phonologically plausible errors in the deaf group only. Implications of findings for the phonological decoding self-teaching model and for supporting literacy development are discussed.
Highlights
It is well documented that children who are born deaf or who are deafened before they learn to talk experience difficulty in acquiring literacy skills (Traxler, 2000; Wauters, van Bon & Tellings, 2006) and that the gap in performance between deaf and hearing children widens with age (Harris & Terlektsi, 2011; Kyle & Harris, 2010; 2011)
The mean literacy scores of the hearing dyslexic group were significantly lower than their age matched peers (tspelling (19)=-2.59, p=.02; twordreading (19)=4.99, p
Like Harris & Terleksti (2010) we found no differences in the literacy scores of children with cochlear implants (CI) and those with digital hearing aids, so these groups were not considered separately in our analyses
Summary
It is well documented that children who are born deaf or who are deafened before they learn to talk experience difficulty in acquiring literacy skills (Traxler, 2000; Wauters, van Bon & Tellings, 2006) and that the gap in performance between deaf and hearing children widens with age (Harris & Terlektsi, 2011; Kyle & Harris, 2010; 2011). Colombo, Arfe & Bronte (2012) note in their study of phonological mechanisms in written spelling in profoundly deaf children that ‘the ability to form a well-defined and robust representation of the phonological structure of words, and the consequent knowledge of their sound components is a prerequisite for the acquisition of literacy’ (p.2022). Leybaert & Alegria, 1993; Ormel, Hermans, Knoors, Hendriks & Verhoeven, 2010), information derived through speech reading (lipreading or visual speech processing) is known to play an important role in supporting deaf children’s acquisition of phonological skills and reading and spelling development (Harris & Moreno, 2006; Kyle & Harris, 2006, 2010; Kyle, MacSweeney, Mohammed & Campbell, 2009). Other researchers have highlighted the importance of other key skills to literacy outcomes in deaf children, including vocabulary and language skills (e.g. Geers & Moog, 1989; Kyle & Harris, 2010; Mayberry, del Giudice & Lieberman, 2011)
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