Linguistic Skills and Text Reading Comprehension in Prelingually Deaf Readers: A Systematic Review

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Psychology
• Education

Background:

• Scientific interest in deaf individuals' reading skills is high, but research often focuses on word/sentence-level comprehension, not text-level reading literacy.
• Text-level reading comprehension involves different linguistic processes than simpler reading tasks, making it more relevant to real-world literacy.
• Understanding the factors influencing text reading comprehension in deaf readers is crucial for developing effective educational strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically review and analyze 36 studies on linguistic skills and their correlation/prediction with text reading comprehension (RC) in deaf readers.
• To investigate the influence of age and language modalities, including spoken language (SpL) and sign language (SL), on deaf readers' RC.
• To synthesize findings on the relationship between various linguistic skills and text-based RC in the deaf population.

Main Methods:

• Systematic review and analysis of 36 studies adhering to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses 2020 (PRISMA 2020) guidelines.
• Categorization of studies based on linguistic skills examined (lexical, phonological, morphological, syntactic) in SpL and SL.
• Consideration of participant age and language modality (SpL, SL, bimodal bilingualism) in the analysis.

Main Results:

• A significant majority of studies (92%) explored SpL lexical and phonological skills' relation to RC, with lexical skills consistently showing a positive association.
• Fewer studies (33%) investigated SpL morphological and syntactic skills, yet these also demonstrated a strong association with text RC.
• A notable cross-modal correlation between SL skills and RC was found; phonological and receptive vocabulary skills in SL were linked to better RC in children/adolescents, while adult studies showed associations primarily with SL grammatical skills.

Conclusions:

• Lexical knowledge is identified as the primary contributor to text RC in deaf readers, while the role of phonological skills remains inconclusive.
• Morphological and syntactic competencies show a consistent association with RC, warranting further investigation into their specific impact.
• There is clear evidence supporting a positive cross-modal relationship between sign language proficiency and reading comprehension in deaf individuals.