Phonology acquired through the eyes and spelling in deaf children

Hearing and deaf children, ranging in age from 6 years 8 months to 14 years 4 months, and matched for general spelling level, were required to spell high-frequency and low-frequency words. Of interest was performance in relation to degree of exposure to Cued Speech (CS), which is a system delivering phonetically augmented speechreading through the visual modality. Groups were (a) hearing children, (b) deaf children exposed early and intensively to CS at home (CS-Home), and (c) deaf children exposed to CS later and at school only (CS-School). Most of the spelling productions of hearing children as well as of CS-Home children were phonologically accurate for high-frequency as well as for low-frequency words. CS-School children, who had less specified phonological representations, made a lower proportion of phonologically accurate spellings. These findings indicate that the accuracy of phonological representations, independent of the modality (acoustic versus visual) through which spoken language is perceived, determines the acquisition of phonology-to-orthography mappings. Analyses of the spelling productions indicate that the acquisition of orthographic representations of high precision depends on fully specified phonological representations.