Constructing meaning from narrative text. Cognitive processes of deaf children

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Special Education

Background:

• Reading comprehension is a complex cognitive process.
• Understanding how deaf children process narrative text is crucial for educational interventions.
• Prior research has explored prediction strategies in hearing readers, but less is known about deaf readers.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the reading comprehension strategies of deaf children.
• To explore the role of predictions in narrative text comprehension for deaf learners.
• To examine how story structure and thematic organizers influence prediction generation.

Main Methods:

• 48 deaf children from upper elementary and junior high school participated.
• Participants read well-formed and non-well-formed narrative texts.
• Predictions were elicited at three points within each story, with half the stories including a thematic organizer.

Main Results:

• Elaborated predictions were consistently made across both story types.
• A correlation was found between elaborated predictions and reported mental imagery.
• Prediction elaborations were more frequent at the beginning and end of non-well-formed stories and those lacking organizers.

Conclusions:

• Deaf children utilize prediction strategies during reading.
• Mental imagery appears linked to the generation of elaborated predictions.
• Story structure and organizers influence the frequency and placement of predictions in deaf readers.