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

Bibliographic Data

ID5900565
AuthorsEllen Ormel (0009-0005-9641-9141), Marcel R Giezen (0000-0002-3872-2274), Harry Knoors (0000-0002-1709-052X), Ludo Verhoeven (0000-0002-5108-4705), Eva Gutierrez-Sigut, Eva Gutiérrez (0000-0002-6569-2138, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume7
Issue1
Pages51
Publication date2022-02-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguages (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/languages7010051
OpenAlexW4214581947
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited108

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

American Sign Language · Cognitive psychology · Fluency · Learning to read · Linguistics · Phonological awareness · Reading (process · Sign language · Vocabulary · Hand Gesture Recognition Systems · Hearing Impairment and Communication · Psychology · Tactile and Sensory Interactions