Abstract
This study aimed to determine the factors underlying the reading comprehension (RC) failure of prelingually deaf Turkish readers.
Participants were 77 individuals with prelingual deafness and a hearing control of 78 normally developing hearing individuals
selected from three distinct levels of education (3rd–4th graders = elementary; 6th–7th graders = middle; 9th–10th graders
= high). We applied an experimental paradigm manipulating the semantic plausibility and syntactic complexity of sentences
to compare RC at the sentence level. In line with findings reported for prelingually deaf individuals reading in other orthographies,
the deaf participants tested in the present study manifested rather alarmingly impoverished RC skills in comparison to their
hearing counterparts. The findings suggest that this reading failure is rooted in an apparent deficiency in the ability to
recruit syntactic and prior knowledge to make sense of what they read. The evidence further suggests that such deficits prove
strikingly resistant to years of formal oral education.
Participants were 77 individuals with prelingual deafness and a hearing control of 78 normally developing hearing individuals
selected from three distinct levels of education (3rd–4th graders = elementary; 6th–7th graders = middle; 9th–10th graders
= high). We applied an experimental paradigm manipulating the semantic plausibility and syntactic complexity of sentences
to compare RC at the sentence level. In line with findings reported for prelingually deaf individuals reading in other orthographies,
the deaf participants tested in the present study manifested rather alarmingly impoverished RC skills in comparison to their
hearing counterparts. The findings suggest that this reading failure is rooted in an apparent deficiency in the ability to
recruit syntactic and prior knowledge to make sense of what they read. The evidence further suggests that such deficits prove
strikingly resistant to years of formal oral education.
- Content Type Journal Article
- Category Original Article
- Pages 1-19
- DOI 10.1007/s10882-012-9299-8
- Authors
- Paul Miller, Department of Special Education, University of Haifa (IL), Haifa, Israel
- Tevhide Kargin, Department of Special Education, University of Ankara (TR), Ankara, Turkey
- Birkan Guldenoglu, Department of Special Education, University of Ankara (TR), Ankara, Turkey
- Journal Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities
- Online ISSN 1573-3580
- Print ISSN 1056-263X