Deaf Students' Reading and Writing in College: Fluency, Coherence, and Comprehension

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Linguistics
• Deaf Education

Background:

• Reading and writing exhibit complex cognitive interrelations, not merely inverse functions.
• Understanding these connections is crucial for adult deaf learners.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of writing process interruptions on summary quality in deaf students.
• To examine how text coherence influences reading comprehension and recall in this population.

Main Methods:

• Writing processes were interrupted with intervening tasks to assess summary content and coherence.
• Reading texts were manipulated for coherence levels to evaluate comprehension and judgment accuracy.

Main Results:

• Interruption of writing had minimal effect, suggesting stimuli text quality was a key factor.
• Higher text coherence led to better understanding and recall of information.
• Students could identify coherence differences but not accurately judge overall comprehensibility.

Conclusions:

• Text coherence is a critical factor in reading comprehension and written summarization for deaf students.
• Classroom applications should focus on improving text coherence and comprehension strategies.
• Further research is needed on metacognitive judgments of text quality.