Title |
Evidence of an association between sign language phonological awareness and word reading in deaf and hard-of-hearing children
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Published in |
Analysis and Intervention in Developmental Disabilities, November 2015
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DOI | 10.1016/j.ridd.2015.10.008 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Emil Holmer, Mikael Heimann, Mary Rudner |
Abstract |
Children with good phonological awareness (PA) are often good word readers. Here, we asked whether Swedish deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children who are more aware of the phonology of Swedish Sign Language, a language with no orthography, are better at reading words in Swedish. We developed the Cross-modal Phonological Awareness Test (C-PhAT) that can be used to assess PA in both Swedish Sign Language (C-PhAT-SSL) and Swedish (C-PhAT-Swed), and investigated how C-PhAT performance was related to word reading as well as linguistic and cognitive skills. We validated C-PhAT-Swed and administered C-PhAT-Swed and C-PhAT-SSL to DHH children who attended Swedish deaf schools with a bilingual curriculum and were at an early stage of reading. C-PhAT-SSL correlated significantly with word reading for DHH children. They performed poorly on C-PhAT-Swed and their scores did not correlate significantly either with C-PhAT-SSL or word reading, although they did correlate significantly with cognitive measures. These results provide preliminary evidence that DHH children with good sign language PA are better at reading words and show that measures of spoken language PA in DHH children may be confounded by individual differences in cognitive skills. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United States | 4 | 19% |
United Kingdom | 3 | 14% |
Denmark | 1 | 5% |
Netherlands | 1 | 5% |
Finland | 1 | 5% |
Sweden | 1 | 5% |
Austria | 1 | 5% |
Canada | 1 | 5% |
Unknown | 8 | 38% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Members of the public | 17 | 81% |
Scientists | 3 | 14% |
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 1 | 5% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Chile | 1 | <1% |
Spain | 1 | <1% |
United States | 1 | <1% |
Brazil | 1 | <1% |
Unknown | 191 | 98% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Student > Master | 36 | 18% |
Student > Ph. D. Student | 31 | 16% |
Student > Bachelor | 21 | 11% |
Researcher | 16 | 8% |
Student > Doctoral Student | 12 | 6% |
Other | 35 | 18% |
Unknown | 44 | 23% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Psychology | 43 | 22% |
Social Sciences | 18 | 9% |
Medicine and Dentistry | 14 | 7% |
Linguistics | 13 | 7% |
Arts and Humanities | 11 | 6% |
Other | 44 | 23% |
Unknown | 52 | 27% |