Grapheme-phoneme acquisition of deaf preschoolers

We examined acquisition of grapheme-phoneme correspondences by 4 deaf and hard-of-hearing preschoolers using instruction from a curriculum designed specifically for this population supplemented by Visual Phonics. Learning was documented through a multiple baseline across content design as well as descriptive analyses. Preschoolers who used sign language and had average to low-average receptive vocabulary skills and varied speech perception skills acquired all correspondences after instruction. They were also able to use that knowledge while reading words. On a posttest, the children were able to decode graphemes into corresponding phonemes and identified about half of the words that were included during instruction. However, they did not identify any novel words. Descriptive analyses suggest that the children used Visual Phonics as an effective mnemonic device to recall correspondences and that deaf and hard-of-hearing preschoolers, even those with no speech perception abilities, benefited from explicit instruction in the grapheme-phoneme relationship using multimodality support.