Phonology and Deaf Readers

An implicit assumption guiding mainstream
educational methods in deaf education is that deaf
children have awareness of the phonological
structure of spoken language (have phonological
representations). Surprisingly however, there is
very little empirical research testing this
assumption in terms of both the construction and the
specification of deaf children s underlying
representations of speech. Thus an understanding of
the extent to which speech perception in the absence
of audition result in similarities or differences in
the way that speech patterns are represented or
processed between deaf and hearing individuals is
limited. To fill this void, this study investigated
whether prelingual, profoundly deaf children have
awareness of phonological structure at three levels
of linguistic complexity. A clear understanding of
phonological development in deaf learners has
particular relevance given the significance of
spoken language phonological processes in cognitive
accounts of reading disability in the hearing
population and the assumption that these accounts
fully explain deaf children s reading difficulties
and abilities.

Autorentext
Dr. Lynn McQuarrie is a faculty member in the Department of Educational Psychology in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta, Edmonton,Canada. Her ongoing research is focused on the impact of hearing loss on first and second language literacy acquisition and development.

Klappentext
An implicit assumption guiding mainstream educational methods in deaf education is that deaf children have awareness of the phonological structure of spoken language (have phonological representations). Surprisingly however, there is very little empirical research testing this assumption in terms of both the construction and the specification of deaf children's underlying representations of speech. Thus an understanding of the extent to which speech perception in the absence of audition result in similarities or differences in the way that speech patterns are represented or processed between deaf and hearing individuals is limited. To fill this void, this study investigated whether prelingual, profoundly deaf children have awareness of phonological structure at three levels of linguistic complexity. A clear understanding of phonological development in deaf learners has particular relevance given the significance of spoken language phonological processes in cognitive accounts of reading disability in the hearing population and the assumption that these accounts fully explain deaf children's reading difficulties and abilities.