Complex word reading in Dutch deaf children and adults.
Deaf children read long words slowly because they do not spot the small parts inside—teach those parts directly.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers tested how Dutch deaf sixth-graders and adults read long, tricky words. They timed how fast and how right each group read words with prefixes, suffixes, and compound words.
Hearing classmates and adults did the same task for comparison.
What they found
Deaf kids got more words wrong and took longer than hearing kids. Deaf adults read the words correctly but still moved more slowly than hearing adults.
The authors say the deaf children did not know the small word parts inside big words.
How this fits with other research
van Gent et al. (2012) shows Dutch deaf youth often carry extra diagnoses like autism or ID. That means reading lessons may need to fit more than one need.
Maïonchi-Pino et al. (2012) found French dyslexic kids still use sound cues, just slower. Deaf kids in Cashon et al. (2013) miss morphological cues, not sound cues. The two studies agree that speed, not basic skill, can be the target.
Noordenbos et al. (2012) spotted Dutch kindergarteners at reading risk by their odd sound perception. Cashon et al. (2013) spot older deaf kids by their weak morphological perception. Together they give Dutch schools two early flags: odd sounds in preschool, weak word parts in grade six.
Why it matters
If you teach reading to deaf learners, do not just drill phonics. Spend time pulling words apart: un-happy, teach-er, school-bus. Use color coding, sign language, and quick timed games so they see and feel the small parts. One solid move: before a story, pull out three compound or suffixed words, sign each part, and have students build and rebuild the words aloud and on paper.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Children who are deaf are often delayed in reading comprehension. This delay could be due to problems in morphological processing during word reading. In this study, we investigated whether 6th grade deaf children and adults are delayed in comparison to their hearing peers in reading complex derivational words and compounds compared to monomorphemic words. The results show that deaf children are delayed in reading both derivational words and compounds as compared to hearing children, while both deaf and hearing adults performed equally well on a lexical decision task. However, deaf adults generally showed slower reaction times than hearing adults. For both deaf and hearing children, derivational words were more difficult than compounds, as reflected in hearing children's slower reaction times and in deaf children's lower accuracy scores. This finding likely reflects deaf children's lack of familiarity with the meaning of the bound morphemes attached to the stems in derivational words. Therefore, it might be beneficial to teach deaf children the meaning of bound morphemes and to train them to use morphology in word reading. Moreover, these findings imply that it is important to focus on both monomorphemic and polymorphemic words when assessing word reading ability in deaf children.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2013 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2012.12.010