Deaf and hearing children read differently: An eye-tracking study

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Abstract

Deaf and hearing children read differently: An eye-tracking study

While greater consensus exists in the literature regarding the processes by which hearing children develop print literacy, comparatively little agreement exists regarding literacy development in deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children. One view is the Qualitative Similarity Hypothesis which posits that the methods by which DHH children and hearing children approach learning to read are qualitatively similar, reading development in DHH children is typically delayed due to a lack of access to speech sounds (Paul, 2001, 2008; Wang et al. 2008). An alternative account is that signed language knowledge predicts reading ability (Allen & Morere 2020, 2012; Allen et al. 2009; Mayberry et al. 2011). Indeed various reports have demonstrated that DHH adult signers do not depend on speech-based codes while reading (Campbell & Wright, 1988; Harris & Beech, 1998; Bélanger et al. 2012), and many profoundly deaf signers of ASL find great success in learning to read.
We employ eye-tracking technology to examine specific eye-gaze behaviors that DHH children employ during reading. We provide such a study by adopting a homophone foil paradigm and mixed-effects modeling to examine the degree to which signers engage in phonological recoding and thus are dependent on speech-based codes when acquiring print literacy. Results suggest that DHH signers are not delayed in reading skill compared to hearing readers and that speech-based codes are not highly impactful during reading in this population. Implications from this study may influence educational best practices regarding language input for DHH children to maximize reading potential.

Author

• Frances Cooley, The University of Texas - Austin