Phonological, Speechreading, and Visual-Orthographic Processing Skills of Chinese Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children

Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children may develop compensatory strategies in language learning due to auditory limitations, such as using speechreading to process spoken information. However, it remains unclear whether similar visual compensatory mechanisms are employed by DHH children when acquiring written languages, especially in visually complex logographic systems such as Chinese. This study examined the characteristics of speechreading as well as phonological and visual-orthographic processing skills in Chinese reading among DHH children, utilizing both age- and reading level-matched designs.

A total of 24 DHH children who used sign language participated in the present study, alongside 24 age-matched and 24 reading level-matched hearing peers. All participants completed a battery of assessments on reading and related cognitive skills, including Chinese character reading, sentence comprehension, text comprehension, phonological awareness, rapid naming, speechreading comprehension, and orthographic and visual processing.

Whereas DHH children performed significantly worse than age- and reading level-matched hearing children on phonological awareness and rapid naming, they performed significantly better than the two hearing groups on speechreading comprehension and visual search tasks. In addition, DHH children also performed comparably to the two hearing groups on orthographic skills. Correlation analyses revealed that, for DHH children, higher phonological awareness was significantly correlated with better Chinese character reading and that faster rapid naming and better speechreading at the single-word level were significantly correlated with increased text comprehension. Additionally, the hit rate of real characters and visual processing showed a trend toward correlation with Chinese character reading.

These findings suggest that, despite challenges in auditory and phonological processing, DHH children may resort to visual compensatory strategies to facilitate their reading development.

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.31337374.