Abstract
To understand the reading strategies used by deaf students, two groups of profoundly deaf individuals were tested: Group 1: users of the Brazilian Sign Language and Group 2: users of the Brazilian Sign Language and speech and/or lip reading. A reading test was used to assess the degree of development of logographic, alphabetic and orthographic strategies. The group of deaf students who used alternative means of communication (Group 2) showed improved performance in all psycholinguistic categories of the test in comparison to Group 1. It was observed that the use of phonology is not directly associated with good reading skills in the profoundly deaf. On the other hand, word recognition by these readers occurs via the utilization of the orthographic strategy, which proved to be efficient.
Keywords
Deafness; Lip reading; Reading; Sign language; Speech; Special education
Note: When comparing the articles, the school grades in the study by Capovilla et al. (2005) were converted to the current nine-year school system. WRCT: Word Reading Competence Test.
Note: HPW: Homophonic Pseudowords; PPS: Pseudoword With Phonological Shift; PVS: Pseudowords With Visual Shift; SIW: Semantically Incorrect Words;SPW: Strange Pseudowords; WRCT: Word Reading Competence Test.