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Time-Course of Grammatical Processing in Deaf Readers: An Eye-Movement Study
Nadina Gómez-Merino1, Inmaculada Fajardo1, Antonio Ferrer1
1Reading Research Unit, Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, University of Valencia and.
Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education
|March 17, 2020
Summary
Deaf students showed lower accuracy in judging sentence correctness compared to hearing peers. Deficits in syntactic skills significantly impacted sentence processing for deaf readers, suggesting a cascading effect.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Background:
- Sentence processing in deaf individuals is complex.
- Understanding the impact of hearing status on language acquisition is crucial.
- Eye-tracking offers insights into cognitive processes during reading.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare sentence grammaticality judgment accuracy between deaf and typically hearing (TH) children.
- To investigate the role of syntactic skills in sentence processing for deaf readers.
- To analyze eye movement patterns during the processing of grammatically congruent and incongruent sentences.
Main Methods:
- Eye movements were recorded while 20 deaf and 20 TH children (mean age 12 years) judged sentence correctness.
- Participants evaluated sentences with or without grammatically incongruent words.
- Additional tests assessed syntactic skills, vocabulary, and reading speed.
Main Results:
- TH participants had higher accuracy in grammaticality judgments than deaf participants.
- Both groups showed longer fixation times on target words in incongruent sentences.
- Deaf students exhibited more fixations but shorter initial fixation durations on target words.
- Lower syntactic skills in deaf students were linked to sentence processing difficulties.
Conclusions:
- Syntactic skill deficits significantly affect sentence processing in deaf readers.
- Eye-tracking data reveals distinct reading patterns between deaf and TH children.
- Syntactic abilities play a critical role in the cascading effects observed in sentence processing for deaf individuals.
