Perceptual Development in the Profoundly Deaf as Related To Early Reading

Abstract

This study sought to investigate the development of the process whereby deaf subjects attend to the orthographic structure of tachistoscopically presented verbal materials. Two stimulus sets (half structured, half unstructured) and two factorial designs were used to study the perception of words and letter sequences by 108 deaf and hearing Ss matched at three grade levels of word reading (grades 1,2, and 4). It was found that both the deaf and the hearing were influenced by orthographic structure at the earliest levels. Unlike earlier findings, this study showed that the hearing enjoyed no overall superiority in this task, a difference discussed in terms of matching procedures. In addition, the Ss x Materials interaction was significant at the fourth-grade level, with these older deaf children performing as well on structured items and better on unstructured items than the hearing.