Phonological Awareness and Decoding in Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing Students Who Use Visual Phonics

Abstract

Visual phonics, a system of 45 hand and symbol cues that represent the phonemes of spoken English, has been used as a tool in literacy instruction with deaf/hard-of-hearing (DHH) students for over 20 years. Despite years of anecdotal support, there is relatively little published evidence of its impact on reading achievement. This study was designed to examine the relationship between performance on a phonological awareness task, performance on a decoding task, reading ability, and length of time in literacy instruction with visual phonics for 10 DHH kindergarten through Grade 3 students receiving academic instruction with sign-supported English and American Sign Language. Findings indicate that these students were able to use phonological information to make rhyme judgments and to decode; however, no relationship between performance on reading ability and length of time in literacy instruction with visual phonics was found.

Literacy and Phonological Skills in Oral Deaf Children and Hearing Children With a History of Dyslexia

“…Whereas hearing children's representations arise primarily from listening to spoken language, deaf children additionally use visual cues from speechreading (Kyle, Campbell, & MacSweeney, ; Kyle & Harris, , ). Cued Speech (a visual version of English based on a system of handshapes and positions used while speaking to disambiguate lip patterns; Cued Speech UK, n.d.), Visual Phonics (a series of hand cues and written symbols used to represent the individual sounds of English used only in phonics teaching; International Communication Learning Institute, ), finger spelling (the manual alphabet used in sign languages), and alphabetic script may also underpin phonological development and lead to better levels of reading ability (e.g., Haptonstall‐Nykaza & Schick, ; Leybaert, ; McQuarrie & Parilla, ; Narr, ; Trezek, Wang, Woods, Gampp, & Paul, ). Phonics‐based interventions using Cued Speech and Visual Phonics have been employed with some success to improve reading levels of struggling deaf readers (E.M. Miller, Lederberg, & Easterbrooks, ; Trezek & Malmgren, ; Trezek & Wang, ) and have provided further evidence that for deaf and hearing children alike, phonological knowledge of the written language is important if they are to become competent readers (Mayer, ).…”

Literacy Outcomes for Primary School Children Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing: A Cohort Comparison Study

“…DHH children are able to gain knowledge about speech sounds through combining auditory information with information gained through speechreading (Kyle & Harris, 2010). Encouraging children to look at the way sounds are made on the lips -perhaps with the additional information that can be provided by visual phonics (Narr, 2008;Trezek, Wang, Woods, Gampp, & Paul, 2007) -can support the development of more robust phonological coding skills. The finding that letter-sound knowledge was associated with phonological awareness in the present study suggests that training in grapheme-phoneme correspondences might also be helpful as has been shown in a recent computer-based training study carried out in Sweden (Nakeva von Mentzer et al, 2013); and also in an extensive phonological training intervention carried out in the US (Miller, Lederberg, & Easterbrooks, 2013).…”

Procédures graphophonémiques et graphosyllabiques chez des lecteurs dyslexiques et des lecteurs sourds du primaire: l'effet de la tâche

“…Les résultats desétudes dans ce domaine ne sont pas consensuels, notamment parce que les procédures phonologiques ne sont pas toujours clairement définies et correspondent a différents construits théoriques. Certains montrent que les sourds ont accès aux procédures phonologiques, maisà un niveau moindre que leurs pairs entendants (Alegria & Lechat, 2005;Colin, Magnan,Écalle, & Leybaert, 2007;Dyer, MacSweeney, Szczerbinski, Green, & Campbell, 2003;Kyle & Harris, 2006Narr, 2008;Spencer & Tomblin, 2008;Transler & Reitsma, 2005), alors que d'autres ne peuvent conclure en faveur de la présence de procédures phonologiques (Bélanger, Baum, & Mayberry, 2011;Chincotta & Chincotta, 1996;Geers, 2003;Izzo, 2002;Merrills, Underwood, & Wood, 1994;Waters & Doehring, 1990). Dans ces derniers cas, les auteurs concluent que les sourds utilisent des procédures non-phonologiques, parfois décrites comme des procédures visuo-orthographiques.…”

“…Daigle et Armand (2008), Dyer et al (2003), Narr (2008), Sterne et Goswami (2000), Transler, Gombert, et Leybaert (2001), et Transler et Reitsma (2005) ont utilisé des tâches permettant d'observer unéventuel effet d'homophonie. Pour déterminer si deux items sont homophones, le lecteur doit convertir les graphèmes en phonèmes.…”