The effect of enhanced storybook interaction on signing deaf children's vocabulary

The link between vocabulary and later literacy is well documented in the research base. One way children gain vocabulary is through incidental learning. Deaf or hard-of-hearing children (D/HH) often struggle with incidental learning and require vocabulary intervention to increase their lexicon. An effective vocabulary intervention is storybook reading. When dialogic methods are added to storybook reading, the gains are greater than with traditional storybook reading. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an enhanced storybook reading intervention, which included scripted questions and picture prompts, on the vocabulary of young signing D/HH children. We utilized a multiple baseline across content probe design. We discovered a functional relation between the storybook intervention and picture vocabulary identification for several participants. This outcome offers insight into appropriate interventions to increase vocabulary for signing D/HH children.