The relationship between the reading and signing skills of deaf children in bilingual education programs

Narrative reconstruction in deaf and hearing children: A comparative study in the context of Arabic diglossia

This study explores the narrative skills of deaf and hearing children within the context of Arabic diglossia, a linguistic environment characterised by significant differences between spoken dialects and formal written language. Using Stein and Glenn's (1979) and Bruner's (1991) frameworks, the research analyses the narrative constructions of 13 hearing and 13 deaf children in Kuwait. The findings reveal that hearing children, benefiting from consistent exposure to spoken and formal Arabic, produced more coherent and detailed narratives compared to deaf children. Hearing participants also demonstrated greater vocabulary diversity. Age-related improvements in narrative skills were more pronounced among hearing children, while the impact of sign language exposure on narrative abilities was significant among deaf children. The study underscores the critical role of early language exposure and educational support in fostering narrative development, particularly in a diglossic context. These findings highlight the need for specialised educational strategies to support the unique narrative development needs of deaf children.

The Acquisition of a Diglossic Language by Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students: Evidence From a Sentence Production Task

PURPOSE

The current study aimed to examine morphosyntactic errors in sentences produced by DHH students, who are signers of Israeli Sign Language, and also users of Palestinian Colloquial Arabic (PCA) and written Modern Standard Arabic (MSA).

METHOD

Nineteen school-age DHH students participated in a sentence elicitation task in which they retold events portrayed in 24 videos in PCA and MSA. A control group of 19 hearing students was tested with the same task. Sentences in each language variety were coded for grammatical versus ungrammatical productions and for type of morphosyntactic errors for the latter. In addition, code-switched words were counted.

RESULTS

The hearing group showed no morphosyntactic errors, whereas the DHH students showed morphosyntactic errors in both PCA and MSA. In addition, both groups code-switched in both PCA and MSA, with more code-switching in the MSA task than in the PCA task. Furthermore, an interaction with age revealed that young students code-switched more in MSA and older students code-switched more in PCA.

CONCLUSIONS

It is suggested that the morphosyntactic abilities of DHH students are incomplete in both language varieties. Lack of spoken language input may negatively influence the acquisition of spoken language, which impacts further the acquisition of the standard language in diglossic contexts. Code-switching is explained as both due to lexical gaps, when occurring in MSA, and an effort to raise the register in PCA.

Does early exposure to spoken and sign language affect reading fluency in deaf and hard-of-hearing adult signers?

Introduction

Early linguistic background, and in particular, access to language, lays the foundation of future reading skills in deaf and hard-of-hearing signers. The current study aims to estimate the impact of two factors - early access to sign and/or spoken language - on reading fluency in deaf and hard-of-hearing adult Russian Sign Language speakers.

Methods

In the eye-tracking experiment, 26 deaf and 14 hard-of-hearing native Russian Sign Language speakers read 144 sentences from the Russian Sentence Corpus. Analysis of global eye-movement trajectories (scanpaths) was used to identify clusters of typical reading trajectories. The role of early access to sign and spoken language as well as vocabulary size as predictors of the more fluent reading pattern was tested.

Results

Hard-of-hearing signers with early access to sign language read more fluently than those who were exposed to sign language later in life or deaf signers without access to speech sounds. No association between early access to spoken language and reading fluency was found.

Discussion

Our results suggest a unique advantage for the hard-of-hearing individuals from having early access to both sign and spoken language and support the existing claims that early exposure to sign language is beneficial not only for deaf but also for hard-of-hearing children.

Learning a Sign Language Does Not Hinder Acquisition of a Spoken Language

PURPOSE

The purpose of this study is to determine whether and how learning American Sign Language (ASL) is associated with spoken English skills in a sample of ASL-English bilingual deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children.

METHOD

This cross-sectional study of vocabulary size included 56 DHH children between 8 and 60 months of age who were learning both ASL and spoken English and had hearing parents. English and ASL vocabulary were independently assessed via parent report checklists.

RESULTS

ASL vocabulary size positively correlated with spoken English vocabulary size. Spoken English vocabulary sizes in the ASL-English bilingual DHH children in the present sample were comparable to those in previous reports of monolingual DHH children who were learning only English. ASL-English bilingual DHH children had total vocabularies (combining ASL and English) that were equivalent to same-age hearing monolingual children. Children with large ASL vocabularies were more likely to have spoken English vocabularies in the average range based on norms for hearing monolingual children.

CONCLUSIONS

Contrary to predictions often cited in the literature, acquisition of sign language does not harm spoken vocabulary acquisition. This retrospective, correlational study cannot determine whether there is a causal relationship between sign language and spoken language vocabulary acquisition, but if a causal relationship exists, the evidence here suggests that the effect would be positive. Bilingual DHH children have age-expected vocabularies when considering the entirety of their language skills. We found no evidence to support recommendations that families with DHH children avoid learning sign language. Rather, our findings show that children with early ASL exposure can develop age-appropriate vocabulary skills in both ASL and spoken English.

Deaf Children Need Rich Language Input from the Start: Support in Advising Parents

Bilingual bimodalism is a great benefit to deaf children at home and in schooling. Deaf signing children perform better overall than non-signing deaf children, regardless of whether they use a cochlear implant. Raising a deaf child in a speech-only environment can carry cognitive and psycho-social risks that may have lifelong adverse effects. For children born deaf, or who become deaf in early childhood, we recommend comprehensible multimodal language exposure and engagement in joint activity with parents and friends to assure age-appropriate first-language acquisition. Accessible visual language input should begin as close to birth as possible. Hearing parents will need timely and extensive support; thus, we propose that, upon the birth of a deaf child and through the preschool years, among other things, the family needs an adult deaf presence in the home for several hours every day to be a linguistic model, to guide the family in taking sign language lessons, to show the family how to make spoken language accessible to their deaf child, and to be an encouraging liaison to deaf communities. While such a support program will be complicated and challenging to implement, it is far less costly than the harm of linguistic deprivation.

Contribution of Lexical Quality and Sign Language Variables to Reading Comprehension

The lexical quality hypothesis proposes that the quality of phonological, orthographic, and semantic representations impacts reading comprehension. In Study 1, we evaluated the contributions of lexical quality to reading comprehension in 97 deaf and 98 hearing adults matched for reading ability. While phonological awareness was a strong predictor for hearing readers, for deaf readers, orthographic precision and semantic knowledge, not phonology, predicted reading comprehension (assessed by two different tests). For deaf readers, the architecture of the reading system adapts by shifting reliance from (coarse-grained) phonological representations to high-quality orthographic and semantic representations. In Study 2, we examined the contribution of American Sign Language (ASL) variables to reading comprehension in 83 deaf adults. Fingerspelling (FS) and ASL comprehension skills predicted reading comprehension. We suggest that FS might reinforce orthographic-to-semantic mappings and that sign language comprehension may serve as a linguistic basis for the development of skilled reading in deaf signers.

Number Stroop Effects in Arabic Digits and ASL Number Signs: The Impact of Age and Setting of Language Acquisition

Multiple studies have reported mathematics underachievement for students who are deaf, but the onset, scope, and causes of this phenomenon remain understudied. Early language deprivation might be one factor influencing the acquisition of numbers. In this study, we investigated a basic and fundamental mathematical skill, automatic magnitude processing, in two formats (Arabic digits and American Sign Language number signs) and the influence of age of first language exposure on both formats by using two versions of the Number Stroop Test. We compared the performance of individuals born deaf who experienced early language deprivation to that of individuals born deaf who experienced sign language in early life and hearing second language learners of ASL. In both formats of magnitude representation, late first language learners demonstrated overall slower reaction times. They were also less accurate on incongruent trials but performed no differently from early signers and second language learners on other trials. When magnitude was represented by Arabic digits, late first language learners exhibited robust Number Stroop Effects, suggesting automatic magnitude processing, but they also demonstrated a large speed difference between size and number judgments not observed in the other groups. In a task with ASL number signs, the Number Stroop Effect was not found in any group, suggesting that magnitude representation might be format-specific, in line with the results from several other languages. Late first language learners also demonstrate unusual patterns of slower reaction time for neutral rather than incongruent stimuli. Together, the results show that early language deprivation affects the ability to automatically judge quantities expressed both linguistically and by Arabic digits, but that it can be acquired later in life when language is available. Contrary to previous studies that find differences in speed of number processing between deaf and hearing participants, we find that when language is acquired early in life, deaf signers perform identically to hearing participants.

Predictors of Word and Text Reading Fluency of Deaf Children in Bilingual Deaf Education Programmes

Reading continues to be a challenging task for most deaf children. Bimodal bilingual education creates a supportive environment that stimulates deaf children’s learning through the use of sign language. However, it is still unclear how exposure to sign language might contribute to improving reading ability. Here, we investigate the relative contribution of several cognitive and linguistic variables to the development of word and text reading fluency in deaf children in bimodal bilingual education programmes. The participants of this study were 62 school-aged (8 to 10 years old at the start of the 3-year study) deaf children who took part in bilingual education (using Dutch and Sign Language of The Netherlands) and 40 age-matched hearing children. We assessed vocabulary knowledge in speech and sign, phonological awareness in speech and sign, receptive fingerspelling ability, and short-term memory at time 1 (T1). At times 2 (T2) and 3 (T3), we assessed word and text reading fluency. We found that (1) speech-based vocabulary strongly predicted word and text reading at T2 and T3, (2) fingerspelling ability was a strong predictor of word and text reading fluency at T2 and T3, (3) speech-based phonological awareness predicted word reading accuracy at T2 and T3 but did not predict text reading fluency, and (4) fingerspelling and STM predicted word reading latency at T2 while sign-based phonological awareness predicted this outcome measure at T3. These results suggest that fingerspelling may have an important function in facilitating the construction of orthographical/phonological representations of printed words for deaf children and strengthening word decoding and recognition abilities.

Deaf Children's ASL Vocabulary and ASL Syntax Knowledge Supports English Knowledge

The current study contributes empirical data to our understanding of how knowledge of American Sign Language (ASL) syntax aids reading print English for deaf children who are bilingual and bimodal in ASL and English print. The first analysis, a conceptual replication of Hoffmeister ( 2000), showed that performance on the American Sign Language Assessment Instrument correlated with the Sanford Achievement Test-Reading Comprehension (SAT-RC) and the Rhode Island Test of Language Structures (RITLS, Engen & Engen, 1983). The second analysis was a quantile regression using ASL assessments to predict English print abilities. Different ASL skills were important for English reading comprehension (SAT-RC) versus understanding English syntax (RITLS); the relationship between ASL skills and English print performance also varied for students at different English print ability levels. Strikingly, knowledge of ASL syntax was robustly correlated with knowledge of English syntax at all ability levels. Our findings provide novel and strong evidence for the impact of ASL on the development of English literacy.

Linguistic but Not Cognitive Weaknesses in Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing Poor Comprehenders

This study examined the reading comprehension profiles, and the related linguistic and cognitive skills, of 146 Chinese students in Grades 3-9 who are deaf or hard of hearing (d/Dhh). Employing a rigorous regression approach, the current study identified 19 unexpected poor comprehenders, 24 expected average comprehenders, and 16 unexpected good comprehenders. Compared to the expected average and unexpected good comprehenders, the unexpected poor comprehenders performed worse in broad linguistic skills (i.e., Chinese sign language comprehension, vocabulary, and segmental and suprasegmental phonological awareness), but their weaknesses in cognitive skills (i.e., working memory and executive function) were less severe. These findings suggest that weak linguistic skills are possible indicators of reading comprehension difficulties for students who are d/Dhh.

Language development in deaf bilinguals: Deaf middle school students co-activate written English and American Sign Language during lexical processing

Bilinguals, both hearing and deaf, activate multiple languages simultaneously even in contexts that require only one language. To date, the point in development at which bilingual signers experience cross-language activation of a signed and a spoken language remains unknown. We investigated the processing of written words by ASL-English bilingual deaf middle school students. Deaf bilinguals were faster to respond to English word pairs with phonologically related translations in ASL than to English word pairs with unrelated translations, but no difference was found for hearing controls with no knowledge of ASL. The results indicate that co-activation of signs and written words is not the outcome of years of bilingual experience, but instead characterizes bilingual language development.

Support for parents of deaf children: Common questions and informed, evidence-based answers

To assist medical and hearing-science professionals in supporting parents of deaf children, we have identified common questions that parents may have and provide evidence-based answers. In doing so, a compassionate and positive narrative about deafness and deaf children is offered, one that relies on recent research evidence regarding the critical nature of early exposure to a fully accessible visual language, which in the United States is American Sign Language (ASL). This evidence includes the role of sign language in language acquisition, cognitive development, and literacy. In order for parents to provide a nurturing and anxiety-free environment for early childhood development, signing at home is important even if their child also has the additional nurturing and care of a signing community. It is not just the early years of a child's life that matter for language acquisition; it's the early months, the early weeks, even the early days. Deaf children cannot wait for accessible language input. The whole family must learn simultaneously as the deaf child learns. Even moderate fluency on the part of the family benefits the child enormously. And learning the sign language together can be one of the strongest bonding experiences that the family and deaf child have.

Working Memory for Linguistic and Non-linguistic Manual Gestures: Evidence, Theory, and Application

Linguistic manual gestures are the basis of sign languages used by deaf individuals. Working memory and language processing are intimately connected and thus when language is gesture-based, it is important to understand related working memory mechanisms. This article reviews work on working memory for linguistic and non-linguistic manual gestures and discusses theoretical and applied implications. Empirical evidence shows that there are effects of load and stimulus degradation on working memory for manual gestures. These effects are similar to those found for working memory for speech-based language. Further, there are effects of pre-existing linguistic representation that are partially similar across language modalities. But above all, deaf signers score higher than hearing non-signers on an n-back task with sign-based stimuli, irrespective of their semantic and phonological content, but not with non-linguistic manual actions. This pattern may be partially explained by recent findings relating to cross-modal plasticity in deaf individuals. It suggests that in linguistic gesture-based working memory, semantic aspects may outweigh phonological aspects when processing takes place under challenging conditions. The close association between working memory and language development should be taken into account in understanding and alleviating the challenges faced by deaf children growing up with cochlear implants as well as other clinical populations.

Semantic fluency in deaf children who use spoken and signed language in comparison with hearing peers

BACKGROUND

Deafness has an adverse impact on children's ability to acquire spoken languages. Signed languages offer a more accessible input for deaf children, but because the vast majority are born to hearing parents who do not sign, their early exposure to sign language is limited. Deaf children as a whole are therefore at high risk of language delays.

AIMS

We compared deaf and hearing children's performance on a semantic fluency task. Optimal performance on this task requires a systematic search of the mental lexicon, the retrieval of words within a subcategory and, when that subcategory is exhausted, switching to a new subcategory. We compared retrieval patterns between groups, and also compared the responses of deaf children who used British Sign Language (BSL) with those who used spoken English. We investigated how semantic fluency performance related to children's expressive vocabulary and executive function skills, and also retested semantic fluency in the majority of the children nearly 2 years later, in order to investigate how much progress they had made in that time.

METHODS & PROCEDURES

Participants were deaf children aged 6-11 years (N = 106, comprising 69 users of spoken English, 29 users of BSL and eight users of Sign Supported English-SSE) compared with hearing children (N = 120) of the same age who used spoken English. Semantic fluency was tested for the category 'animals'. We coded for errors, clusters (e.g., 'pets', 'farm animals') and switches. Participants also completed the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test and a battery of six non-verbal executive function tasks. In addition, we collected follow-up semantic fluency data for 70 deaf and 74 hearing children, nearly 2 years after they were first tested.

OUTCOMES & RESULTS

Deaf children, whether using spoken or signed language, produced fewer items in the semantic fluency task than hearing children, but they showed similar patterns of responses for items most commonly produced, clustering of items into subcategories and switching between subcategories. Both vocabulary and executive function scores predicted the number of correct items produced. Follow-up data from deaf participants showed continuing delays relative to hearing children 2 years later.

CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS

We conclude that semantic fluency can be used experimentally to investigate lexical organization in deaf children, and that it potentially has clinical utility across the heterogeneous deaf population. We present normative data to aid clinicians who wish to use this task with deaf children.

Bilingual deaf readers' use of semantic and syntactic cues in the processing of English relative clauses

Eye fixation measures were used to examine English relative clause processing by adult ASL-English bilingual deaf readers. Participants processed subject relative clauses faster than object relative clauses, but expected animacy cues eliminated processing difficulty in object relative clauses. This brings into question previous claims that deaf readers' sentence processing strategies are qualitatively different from those of hearing English native speakers. Measures of English comprehension predicted reading speed, but not differences in syntactic processing. However, a trend for ASL self-ratings to predict the ability to handle syntactic complexity approached significance. Results suggest a need to explore how objective ASL proficiency measures might provide insights into deaf readers' ability to exploit syntactic cues in English.

Computerized Sign Language-Based Literacy Training for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children

Strengthening the connections between sign language and written language may improve reading skills in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) signing children. The main aim of the present study was to investigate whether computerized sign language-based literacy training improves reading skills in DHH signing children who are learning to read. Further, longitudinal associations between sign language skills and developing reading skills were investigated. Participants were recruited from Swedish state special schools for DHH children, where pupils are taught in both sign language and spoken language. Reading skills were assessed at five occasions and the intervention was implemented in a cross-over design. Results indicated that reading skills improved over time and that development of word reading was predicted by the ability to imitate unfamiliar lexical signs, but there was only weak evidence that it was supported by the intervention. These results demonstrate for the first time a longitudinal link between sign-based abilities and word reading in DHH signing children who are learning to read. We suggest that the active construction of novel lexical forms may be a supramodal mechanism underlying word reading development.

The time course of cross-language activation in deaf ASL-English bilinguals

What is the time course of cross-language activation in deaf sign-print bilinguals? Prior studies demonstrating cross-language activation in deaf bilinguals used paradigms that would allow strategic or conscious translation. This study investigates whether cross-language activation can be eliminated by reducing the time available for lexical processing. Deaf ASL-English bilinguals and hearing English monolinguals viewed pairs of English words and judged their semantic similarity. Half of the stimuli had phonologically related translations in ASL, but participants saw only English words. We replicated prior findings of cross-language activation despite the introduction of a much faster rate of presentation. Further, the deaf bilinguals were as fast or faster than hearing monolinguals despite the fact that the task was in their second language. The results allow us to rule out the possibility that deaf ASL-English bilinguals only activate ASL phonological forms when given ample time for strategic or conscious translation across their two languages.

Academic Achievement of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students in an ASL/English Bilingual Program

There has been a scarcity of studies exploring the influence of students' American Sign Language (ASL) proficiency on their academic achievement in ASL/English bilingual programs. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of ASL proficiency on reading comprehension skills and academic achievement of 85 deaf or hard-of-hearing signing students. Two subgroups, differing in ASL proficiency, were compared on the Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress and the reading comprehension subtest of the Stanford Achievement Test, 10th edition. Findings suggested that students highly proficient in ASL outperformed their less proficient peers in nationally standardized measures of reading comprehension, English language use, and mathematics. Moreover, a regression model consisting of 5 predictors including variables regarding education, hearing devices, and secondary disabilities as well as ASL proficiency and home language showed that ASL proficiency was the single variable significantly predicting results on all outcome measures. This study calls for a paradigm shift in thinking about deaf education by focusing on characteristics shared among successful deaf signing readers, specifically ASL fluency.

Language co-activation and lexical selection in bimodal bilinguals: Evidence from picture-word interference

We used picture-word interference (PWI) to discover a) whether cross-language activation at the lexical level can yield phonological priming effects when languages do not share phonological representations, and b) whether semantic interference effects occur without articulatory competition. Bimodal bilinguals fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) and English named pictures in ASL while listening to distractor words that were 1) translation equivalents, 2) phonologically related to the target sign through translation, 3) semantically related, or 4) unrelated. Monolingual speakers named pictures in English. Production of ASL signs was facilitated by words that were phonologically related through translation and by translation equivalents, indicating that cross-language activation spreads from lexical to phonological levels for production. Semantic interference effects were not observed for bimodal bilinguals, providing some support for a post-lexical locus of semantic interference, but which we suggest may instead reflect time course differences in spoken and signed production in the PWI task.

Psycholinguistic, cognitive, and neural implications of bimodal bilingualism

Bimodal bilinguals, fluent in a signed and a spoken language, exhibit a unique form of bilingualism because their two languages access distinct sensory-motor systems for comprehension and production. Differences between unimodal and bimodal bilinguals have implications for how the brain is organized to control, process, and represent two languages. Evidence from code-blending (simultaneous production of a word and a sign) indicates that the production system can access two lexical representations without cost, and the comprehension system must be able to simultaneously integrate lexical information from two languages. Further, evidence of cross-language activation in bimodal bilinguals indicates the necessity of links between languages at the lexical or semantic level. Finally, the bimodal bilingual brain differs from the unimodal bilingual brain with respect to the degree and extent of neural overlap for the two languages, with less overlap for bimodal bilinguals.

Evidence of an association between sign language phonological awareness and word reading in deaf and hard-of-hearing children

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Children with good phonological awareness (PA) are often good word readers. Here, we asked whether Swedish deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children who are more aware of the phonology of Swedish Sign Language, a language with no orthography, are better at reading words in Swedish.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

We developed the Cross-modal Phonological Awareness Test (C-PhAT) that can be used to assess PA in both Swedish Sign Language (C-PhAT-SSL) and Swedish (C-PhAT-Swed), and investigated how C-PhAT performance was related to word reading as well as linguistic and cognitive skills. We validated C-PhAT-Swed and administered C-PhAT-Swed and C-PhAT-SSL to DHH children who attended Swedish deaf schools with a bilingual curriculum and were at an early stage of reading.

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

C-PhAT-SSL correlated significantly with word reading for DHH children. They performed poorly on C-PhAT-Swed and their scores did not correlate significantly either with C-PhAT-SSL or word reading, although they did correlate significantly with cognitive measures.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

These results provide preliminary evidence that DHH children with good sign language PA are better at reading words and show that measures of spoken language PA in DHH children may be confounded by individual differences in cognitive skills.

Fingerspelling as a Novel Gateway into Reading Fluency in Deaf Bilinguals

Studies have shown that American Sign Language (ASL) fluency has a positive impact on deaf individuals’ English reading, but the cognitive and cross-linguistic mechanisms permitting the mapping of a visual-manual language onto a sound-based language have yet to be elucidated. Fingerspelling, which represents English orthography with 26 distinct hand configurations, is an integral part of ASL and has been suggested to provide deaf bilinguals with important cross-linguistic links between sign language and orthography. Using a hierarchical multiple regression analysis, this study examined the relationship of age of ASL exposure, ASL fluency, and fingerspelling skill on reading fluency in deaf college-age bilinguals. After controlling for ASL fluency, fingerspelling skill significantly predicted reading fluency, revealing for the first-time that fingerspelling, above and beyond ASL skills, contributes to reading fluency in deaf bilinguals. We suggest that both fingerspelling—in the visual-manual modality—and reading—in the visual-orthographic modality—are mutually facilitating because they share common underlying cognitive capacities of word decoding accuracy and automaticity of word recognition. The findings provide support for the hypothesis that the development of English reading proficiency may be facilitated through strengthening of the relationship among fingerspelling, sign language, and orthographic decoding en route to reading mastery, and may also reveal optimal approaches for reading instruction for deaf and hard of hearing children.

Visual performance and the use of colored filters in children who are deaf

PURPOSE

To assess visual performance and the effects of color overlays on reading in children who were deaf and children who could hear.

METHODS

Thirty-one children who were deaf (mean [± SD] age, 14 [± 1.99] years) and 39 children who could hear (mean [± SD] age, 13.58 [± 3.09] years) underwent an optometric examination with specific emphasis on near vision. Participants chose an overlay with color optimal for clarity and comfort and completed the Wilkins Rate of Reading Test both with and without an overlay of this color. Nineteen of the participants who were deaf were retested a year later with a modified rate of reading test that used only words that can readily be signed. This modified rate of reading test was repeated 1 week after its first administration.

RESULTS

Participants who were deaf had greater ametropia (p = 0.003), a more distant near point of convergence (p = 0.002), and reduced amplitude of accommodation (p < 0.001) compared with normal-hearing participants. All the children who were deaf chose a color overlay, with 45% choosing a yellow overlay, which increased the rate of reading by 18%. Only 66% of the participants who could hear chose an overlay, and it had no effect on reading speed. With the modified reading test, 7 of 19 (37%) again chose yellow. These participants showed a 9% increase in reading speed with the yellow overlay, which was repeatable 1 week later. The remainder showed no increase in rate of reading with their chosen overlay.

CONCLUSIONS

An eye examination of children who are deaf needs to include a comprehensive assessment of near visual function so that deficiencies of amplitude of accommodation, near point convergence, and ametropia can be treated. A yellow overlay improved reading speed in the participants who were deaf, whereas other colors did not, a finding at variance with earlier work on hearing populations.

Concurrent correlates of Chinese word recognition in deaf and hard-of-hearing children

The aim of this study was to explore the relative contributions of phonological, semantic radical, and morphological awareness to Chinese word recognition in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children. Measures of word recognition, general intelligence, phonological, semantic radical, and morphological awareness were administered to 32 DHH and 35 hearing children in Hong Kong. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that tone, semantic radical, and morphological awareness made independent contributions to word recognition in DHH children after the effects of age and intelligence were statistically controlled for. Semantic radical and morphological awareness was found to explain significantly more variance than tone awareness in predicting word recognition in DHH children. This study has replicated previous evidence regarding the importance of semantic radical and morphological awareness in Chinese word recognition in hearing children and extended its significance to DHH children.

How deaf American Sign Language/English bilingual children become proficient readers: an emic perspective

A primary tenet underlying American Sign Language/English bilingual education for deaf students is that early access to a visual language, developed in conjunction with language planning principles, provides a foundation for literacy in English. The goal of this study is to obtain an emic perspective on bilingual deaf readers transitioning from learning to read to reading to learn. Analysis of 12 interactive, semi-structured interviews identified informal and formal teaching and learning practices in ASL/English bilingual homes and classrooms. These practices value, reinforce, and support the bidirectional acquisition of both languages and provide a strong foundation for literacy.

Bilingual word recognition in deaf and hearing signers: Effects of proficiency and language dominance on cross-language activation

Recent evidence demonstrates that American Sign Language signs are active during print word recognition in deaf bilinguals who are highly proficient in both ASL and English. In the present study, we investigate whether signs are active during print word recognition in two groups of unbalanced bilinguals: deaf ASL-dominant and hearing English-dominant bilinguals. Participants judged the semantic relatedness of word pairs in English. Critically, a subset of both the semantically related and unrelated English word pairs had phonologically related translations in ASL, but participants were never shown any ASL signs during the experiment. Deaf ASL-dominant bilinguals (Experiment 1) were faster when semantically related English word pairs had similar form translations in ASL, but slower when semantically unrelated words had similar form translations in ASL, indicating that ASL signs are engaged during English print word recognition in these ASL-dominant signers. Hearing English-dominant bilinguals (Experiment 2) were also slower to respond to semantically unrelated English word pairs with similar form translations in ASL, but no facilitation effects were observed in this population. The results provide evidence that the interactive nature of lexical processing in bilinguals is impervious to language modality.

Vocabulary Knowledge of Deaf and Hearing Postsecondary Students

Deaf children generally are found to have smaller English vocabularies than hearing peers, although studies involving children with cochlear implants have suggested that the gap may decrease or disappear with age. Less is known about the vocabularies of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) postsecondary students or how their vocabulary knowledge relates to other aspects of academic achievement. This study used the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test to examine the vocabulary knowledge of DHH and hearing postsecondary students as well as their awareness (predictions) of that knowledge. Relationships between vocabulary knowledge and print exposure, communication backgrounds, and reading and verbal abilities also were examined. Consistent with studies of children, hearing college students demonstrated significantly larger vocabularies than DHH students both with and without cochlear implants. DHH students were more likely to overestimate their vocabulary knowledge. Vocabulary scores were positively related to reading and verbal abilities but negatively related to sign language abilities. Among DHH students they also were positively related to measures of spoken language ability. Results are discussed in terms of related cognitive abilities, language fluency, and academic achievement of DHH students and implications for postsecondary education.

Relationships between spoken word and sign processing in children with cochlear implants

The effect of using signed communication on the spoken language development of deaf children with a cochlear implant (CI) is much debated. We report on two studies that investigated relationships between spoken word and sign processing in children with a CI who are exposed to signs in addition to spoken language. Study 1 assessed rapid word and sign learning in 13 children with a CI and found that performance in both language modalities correlated positively. Study 2 tested the effects of using sign-supported speech on spoken word processing in eight children with a CI, showing that simultaneously perceiving signs and spoken words does not negatively impact their spoken word recognition or learning. Together, these two studies suggest that sign exposure does not necessarily have a negative effect on speech processing in some children with a CI.

American Sign Language/English bilingual model: a longitudinal study of academic growth

This study examines reading and mathematics academic growth of deaf and hard-of-hearing students instructed through an American Sign Language (ASL)/English bilingual model. The study participants were exposed to the model for a minimum of 4 years. The study participants' academic growth rates were measured using the Northwest Evaluation Association's Measure of Academic Progress assessment and compared with a national-normed group of grade-level peers that consisted primarily of hearing students. The study also compared academic growth for participants by various characteristics such as gender, parents' hearing status, and secondary disability status and examined the academic outcomes for students after a minimum of 4 years of instruction in an ASL/English bilingual model. The findings support the efficacy of the ASL/English bilingual model.

Developing a structural model of reading: the role of hearing status in reading development over time

The purpose of the present study was to develop a structural model of reading based on the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (Perfetti & Hart, 2002). Data from a 4-year longitudinal study of Dutch primary school children with and without hearing loss were used to conduct an exploratory analysis of how lexical components (i.e., decoding skills, lexical decision, and lexical use) relate to one another and to reading comprehension. Our structural model supports a positive role of the quality of the mental lexicon for reading comprehension. Furthermore, it was possible to apply the same conceptual model of reading development to both groups of children when incorporating hearing status as a grouping variable. However, a multigroup comparison model showed that the predictive values of the relations between the different tasks differed for the two groups.

Language planning for the 21st century: revisiting bilingual language policy for deaf children

For over 25 years in some countries and more recently in others, bilingual education involving sign language and the written/spoken vernacular has been considered an essential educational intervention for deaf children. With the recent growth in universal newborn hearing screening and technological advances such as digital hearing aids and cochlear implants, however, more deaf children than ever before have the potential for acquiring spoken language. As a result, the question arises as to the role of sign language and bilingual education for deaf children, particularly those who are very young. On the basis of recent research and fully recognizing the historical sensitivity of this issue, we suggest that language planning and language policy should be revisited in an effort to ensure that they are appropriate for the increasingly diverse population of deaf children.

Language acquisition for deaf children: Reducing the harms of zero tolerance to the use of alternative approaches

Children acquire language without instruction as long as they are regularly and meaningfully engaged with an accessible human language. Today, 80% of children born deaf in the developed world are implanted with cochlear devices that allow some of them access to sound in their early years, which helps them to develop speech. However, because of brain plasticity changes during early childhood, children who have not acquired a first language in the early years might never be completely fluent in any language. If they miss this critical period for exposure to a natural language, their subsequent development of the cognitive activities that rely on a solid first language might be underdeveloped, such as literacy, memory organization, and number manipulation. An alternative to speech-exclusive approaches to language acquisition exists in the use of sign languages such as American Sign Language (ASL), where acquiring a sign language is subject to the same time constraints of spoken language development. Unfortunately, so far, these alternatives are caught up in an "either - or" dilemma, leading to a highly polarized conflict about which system families should choose for their children, with little tolerance for alternatives by either side of the debate and widespread misinformation about the evidence and implications for or against either approach. The success rate with cochlear implants is highly variable. This issue is still debated, and as far as we know, there are no reliable predictors for success with implants. Yet families are often advised not to expose their child to sign language. Here absolute positions based on ideology create pressures for parents that might jeopardize the real developmental needs of deaf children. What we do know is that cochlear implants do not offer accessible language to many deaf children. By the time it is clear that the deaf child is not acquiring spoken language with cochlear devices, it might already be past the critical period, and the child runs the risk of becoming linguistically deprived. Linguistic deprivation constitutes multiple personal harms as well as harms to society (in terms of costs to our medical systems and in loss of potential productive societal participation).

Vocabulary development in children with hearing loss: the role of child, family, and educational variables

In the present study we examined the effect of hearing status on reading vocabulary development. More specifically, we examined the change of lexical competence in children with hearing loss over grade 4-7 and the predictors of this change. Therefore, we used a multi-factor longitudinal design with multiple outcomes, measuring the reading vocabulary knowledge in children with hearing loss from grades 4 and 5, and of children without hearing loss from grade 4, for 3 years with two word tasks: a lexical decision task and a use decision task. With these tasks we measured word form recognition and (in)correct usage recognition, respectively. A GLM repeated measures procedure indicated that scores and growth rates on the two tasks were affected by hearing status. Moreover, with structural equation modeling we observed that the development of lexical competence in children with hearing loss is stable over time, and a child's lexical competence can be explained best by his or her lexical competence assessed on a previous measurement occasion. If you look back, differences in lexical competence among children with hearing loss stay unfortunately the same. Educational placement, use of sign language at home, intelligence, use of hearing devices, and onset of deafness can account for the differences among children with hearing loss.

A dual-route cascaded model of reading by deaf adults: evidence for grapheme to viseme conversion

There is an ongoing debate whether deaf individuals access phonology when reading, and if so, what impact the ability to access phonology might have on reading achievement. However, the debate so far has been theoretically unspecific on two accounts: (a) the phonological units deaf individuals may have of oral language have not been specified and (b) there seem to be no explicit cognitive models specifying how phonology and other factors operate in reading by deaf individuals. We propose that deaf individuals have representations of the sublexical structure of oral-aural language which are based on mouth shapes and that these sublexical units are activated during reading by deaf individuals. We specify the sublexical units of deaf German readers as 11 "visemes" and incorporate the viseme set into a working model of single-word reading by deaf adults based on the dual-route cascaded model of reading aloud by Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, and Ziegler (2001. DRC: A dual route cascaded model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Psychological Review, 108, 204-256. doi: 10.1037//0033-295x.108.1.204). We assessed the indirect route of this model by investigating the "pseudo-homoviseme" effect using a lexical decision task in deaf German reading adults. We found a main effect of pseudo-homovisemy, suggesting that at least some deaf individuals do automatically access sublexical structure during single-word reading.