Abstract
BackgroundVocabulary knowledge and speechreading are important for deaf children's reading development but it is unknown whether they are independent predictors of reading ability. AimsThis study investigated the relationships between reading, speechreading and vocabulary in a large cohort of deaf and hearing children aged 5 to 14 years. Methods and procedures86 severely and profoundly deaf children and 91 hearing children participated in this study. All children completed assessments of reading comprehension, word reading accuracy, speechreading and vocabulary. Outcomes and resultsRegression analyses showed that vocabulary and speechreading accounted for unique variance in both reading accuracy and comprehension for deaf children. For hearing children, vocabulary was an independent predictor of both reading accuracy and comprehension skills but speechreading only accounted for unique variance in reading accuracy. Conclusions and implicationsSpeechreading and vocabulary are important for reading development in deaf children. The results are interpreted within the Simple View of Reading framework and the theoretical implications for deaf children's reading are discussed.
Highlights
Despite having intelligence scores in the normal range, the majority of deaf children have poorer reading outcomes than their hearing peers (e.g. Conrad, 1979; Kyle & Harris, 2010; Lederberg, Schick, & Spencer, 2013; Wauters, van Bon, & Tellings, 2006)
It is likely that better speechreading skills result in more accurate phonological representations and the current results can be understood within reading models that suggest skilled reading necessitates both a decoding and a linguistic component
These findings suggest that focussing on both vocabulary development and speechreading skills in young deaf children may form a fruitful basis for helping support early reading development in young deaf children
Summary
Despite having intelligence scores in the normal range, the majority of deaf children have poorer reading outcomes than their hearing peers (e.g. Conrad, 1979; Kyle & Harris, 2010; Lederberg, Schick, & Spencer, 2013; Wauters, van Bon, & Tellings, 2006). The relative contribution of these two skills to reading is unknown; the main aim of this study is to examine whether speechreading and vocabulary are independent predictors of reading in deaf and in hearing children. Vocabulary knowledge and speechreading are important for deaf children’s reading development but it is unknown whether they are independent predictors of reading ability. Outcomes and results: Regression analyses showed that vocabulary and speechreading accounted for unique variance in both reading accuracy and comprehension for deaf children. Vocabulary was an independent predictor of both reading accuracy and comprehension skills but speechreading only accounted for unique variance in reading accuracy.
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