This project focus on how atypical language development, due to early onset deafness, impacts language and reading skills.
Description
This project focus on how atypical language development, due to early onset deafness, impacts language and reading skills. We measure the electrophysiological signature of single word recognition in people born profoundly deaf and look explore the relationship between their word decoding processes and their reading ability.
In Spain, five of every one thousand newborns are deaf, and most of them are born to a family of hearing parents and siblings who often cannot provide a rich exposure to a visual language (sign language) from birth. These children typically struggle with language development and reading acquisition. As a consequence, deaf individuals will not have the same access to higher education and job opportunities as their hearing peers (they will endure the associated consequences in quality of life, mental and emotional health). Despite considerable investment in hearing aids, cochlear implants, speech therapy, and adapted educational programs (http://ares.cnice.mec.es/informes/17/contenido/indice.htm), deaf children and adults do not reach a good reading comprehension (see Gutierrez-Sigut, Vergara-Martinez & Perea, 2017, for recent references) and the reasons are still unknown. A review of the literature indicates that prior studies of reading in deaf people have focused in their inability to hear the phonemes of the spoken language rather than on what deaf readers can do easily (see Belánger & Rayner, 2015 for a similar view). However, experiments using this approach have not come to a consensus and have led to educational interventions that do not reach optimal results. In this project, we have adopted a novel view, investigating first how deaf people naturally process a visual language (signed language). Preliminary results show that deaf readers use phonological information of words automatically (Gutierrez-Sigut, et al., 2017). However, unlike hearing readers, the use of this phonological information did not contribute to reading comprehension attainment.
Start date
2015
June
End date
2018
June
Funding agencies:
Ministerio de Economía y de Competitividad
