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Phonological, Orthographic, and Syntactic Awareness and their Relation to Reading Comprehension in Prelingually Deaf Individuals: What Can We Learn from Skilled Readers?

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Abstract

This study seeks to provide new insight into the phonemic, orthographic, and syntactic awareness of individuals with prelingual deafness and the way those contribute to reading. Two tests were used: one designed for the assessment of phonemic/orthographic awareness (PO/OA) and another examining reading comprehension (RC) in contexts where prior knowledge was either helpful or not. Participants were 83 prelingually deaf individuals (DIs): 21 primary school, 36 high school, and 26 university students. The control group consisted of 85 hearing individuals (HIs) from parallel education levels (29 primary school, 29 high school, 27 university). Contrary to predictions made by current reading theories, findings imply that the failure of DIs to develop sensitivity to the phonological properties of words may not underlie their reading difficulties. Rather, this weakness seems to reflect a processing deficit at the supra-lexical (sentence) level where the final meaning of single words is elaborated by its integration based upon syntactic (structural) knowledge.

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Notes

  1. The participants’ school files did not include information regarding the type of test used for the assessment of their intelligence.

  2. ISL is the signed language used by the deaf community in Israel. It has a unique, systematic linguistic structure conveyed through a distinct set of formational parameters (e.g., hand shape, hand movement, place of articulation) underlying its implementation. It should be distinguished from signed Hebrew (generally used in communication with hearing individuals), which involves a rough matching of sign order to word order in spoken Hebrew, but otherwise differs rather substantially from the spoken language. Probably the most outstanding of these linguistic differences is an almost complete lack of devices in signed Hebrew to represent the rich morphological structure of spoken Hebrew.

  3. For detailed information regarding the rationale and criteria underlying the development of the test, see Miller 1997.

  4. The significance level of findings from all post-hoc analyses is p < 0.05.

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  1. Department of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, 31905, Israel

    Paul Miller

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Appendix: Examples of SP and Parallel SI Sentences Varying in Syntactic Complexity

Appendix: Examples of SP and Parallel SI Sentences Varying in Syntactic Complexity

Semantically Plausible (SP) Sentences

The tiger attacked the zebra in the zoo.

Who was attacked?

  1. a)

    the zebra

  2. b)

    the tiger

The girl who looked after the baby read.

Who was reading?

  1. a)

    the girl

  2. b)

    the baby

The women who crossed the street gave chocolate to a girl who was helping an old lady.

Who got chocolate?

  1. a)

    the women

  2. b)

    the girl

  3. c)

    the old lady

Semantically Implausible (SI) Sentences

The cat bit the dog in the backyard.

Who was bitten?

  1. a)

    the dog

  2. b)

    the cat

The women who carried the baby cried.

Who was crying?

  1. a)

    the women

  2. b)

    the baby

The mother who returned from work gave milk to the babysitter who was watching the baby.

Who got the milk?

  1. a)

    the baby

  2. b)

    the mother

  3. c)

    the babysitter

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Miller, P. Phonological, Orthographic, and Syntactic Awareness and their Relation to Reading Comprehension in Prelingually Deaf Individuals: What Can We Learn from Skilled Readers?. J Dev Phys Disabil 22, 549–580 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10882-010-9195-z

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