Deaf and hearing students' morphological knowledge applied to printed English

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Education

Background:

• Morphological knowledge is crucial for reading comprehension.
• Understanding word structure aids in decoding and vocabulary acquisition.
• Previous research indicates potential disparities in morphological skills between deaf and hearing learners.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the morphological knowledge of deaf and hearing students across college and middle school levels.
• To assess the ability to discern and apply knowledge of printed word morphology.
• To identify differences in morphological processing based on hearing status and educational level.

Main Methods:

• A two-part paper-and-pencil test was administered to 70 deaf and 58 hearing students.
• The test assessed the perception of morpheme segmentation within words.
• The test also evaluated the recognition of meanings associated with printed morphemes.

Main Results:

• Hearing college students outperformed all other groups on both parts of the test.
• Deaf college students scored lower than hearing college students but similar to hearing middle school students.
• Deaf middle school students demonstrated the lowest performance, with the steepest decline in performance as task difficulty increased.

Conclusions:

• Deaf students exhibit significant deficits in morphological knowledge compared to hearing peers.
• While deaf students show some capacity for morphographic decoding, their mastery is substantially lower.
• Educational interventions may be needed to enhance morphological skills in deaf learners.