Speechreading, Phonological Skills, and Word Reading Ability in Children.

PURPOSE: The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between speechreading ability, phonological skills, and word reading ability in typically developing children. METHOD: Sixty-six typically developing children (6-7 years old) completed tasks measuring word reading, speechreading (words, sentences, and short stories), alliteration awareness, rhyme awareness, nonword reading, and rapid automatized naming (RAN). RESULTS: Speechreading ability was significantly correlated with rhyme and alliteration awareness, phonological error rate, nonword reading, and reading ability (medium effect sizes) and RAN (small effect size). Multiple regression analyses showed that speechreading was not a unique predictor of word reading ability beyond the contribution of phonological skills. A speechreading error analysis revealed that children tended to use a phonological strategy when speechreading, and in particular, this strategy was used by skilled speechreaders. CONCLUSIONS: The current study provides converging evidence that speechreading and phonological skills are positively related in typically developing children. These skills are likely to have a reciprocal relationship, and children may benefit from having their attention drawn to visual information available on the lips while learning letter sounds or learning to read, as this could augment and strengthen underlying phonological representations.

EXPRESS: Contextual diversity and anchoring: Null effects on learning word forms and opposing effects on learning word meanings.

Words that appear in many contexts/topics are recognised faster than those occurring in fewer contexts (Nation, 2017). However, contextual diversity benefits are less clear in word learning studies. Mak et al. (2021) proposed that diversity benefits might be enhanced if new word meanings are anchored before introducing diversity. In our study, adults (N = 288) learned meanings for eight pseudowords, four experienced in six topics (high diversity) and four in one topic (low diversity). All items were first experienced five times in one topic (anchoring phase), and results were compared to Norman et al. (2022) which used a similar paradigm without an anchoring phase. An old-new decision post-test (did you learn this word?) showed null effects of contextual diversity on written form recognition accuracy and response time, mirroring Norman et al.. A cloze task involved choosing which pseudoword completed a sentence. For sentences situated in a previously experienced context, accuracy was significantly higher for pseudowords learned in the low diversity condition, whereas for sentences situated in a new context, accuracy was non-significantly higher for pseudowords learned in the high diversity condition. Anchoring modulated these effects. Low diversity item accuracy was unaffected by anchoring. However, for high diversity items, accuracy in familiar contexts was better in the current experiment (anchoring) than in Norman et al. (non-anchoring), but accuracy in new contexts did not differ between the two experiments. These results suggest that anchoring facilitates meaning use in familiar contexts, but not generalisation to new contexts, nor word recognition in isolation.

What can Parents' Self-report of Reading Difficulties Tell Us about Their Children's Emergent Literacy at School Entry?

Research has linked family risk (FR) of reading difficulties (RD) with children's difficulties in emergent literacy development. This study is the first to apply parents' self-report of RD as a proxy for FR in a large sample (n = 1171) in order to test group differences in children's emergent literacy. Emergent literacy, the home literacy environment and children's interest in literacy and letters were compared across different groups of FR children around the school entry. The FR children performed lower in emergent literacy compared with not-FR children. Furthermore, when comparing FR children with one parent reporting RD and children with both parents reporting RD, moderate group differences were found in Emergent Literacy. Finally, parents' self-report of RD was a significant contributor of emergent literacy after controlling for the home literacy environment, children's gender, their interest in literacy and letters, months in kindergarten, vocabulary and parents' education. Our findings suggest that schools should monitor the reading development of children with parents self-reporting RD closely - especially if both parents self-report RD. © 2017 The Authors. Dyslexia published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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

Purpose: In this study, we compared the language and literacy of two cohorts of children with severe-profound hearing loss, recruited 10 years apart, to determine if outcomes had improved in line with the introduction of newborn hearing screening and access to improved hearing aid technology. Method: Forty-two children with deafness, aged 5-7 years with a mean unaided loss of 102 DB, were assessed on language, reading, and phonological skills. Their performance was compared with that of a similar group of 32 children with deafness assessed 10 years earlier and also a group of 40 children with normal hearing of similar single word reading ability. Results: English vocabulary was significantly higher in the new cohort although it was still below chronological age. Phonological awareness and reading ability had not significantly changed over time. In both cohorts, English vocabulary predicted reading, but phonological awareness was only a significant predictor for the new cohort. Conclusions: The current results show that vocabulary knowledge of children with severe-profound hearing loss has improved over time, but there has not been a commensurate improvement in phonological skills or reading. They suggest that children with severe-profound hearing loss will require continued support to develop robust phonological coding skills to underpin reading.

Speechreading development in deaf and hearing children: introducing the test of child speechreading.

PURPOSE: In this article, the authors describe the development of a new instrument, the Test of Child Speechreading (ToCS), which was specifically designed for use with deaf and hearing children. Speechreading is a skill that is required for deaf children to access the language of the hearing community. ToCS is a deaf-friendly, computer-based test that measures child speechreading (silent lipreading) at 3 psycholinguistic levels: (a) Words, (b) Sentences, and (c) Short Stories. The aims of the study were to standardize the ToCS with deaf and hearing children and to investigate the effects of hearing status, age, and linguistic complexity on speechreading ability. METHOD: Eighty-six severely and profoundly deaf children and 91 hearing children participated. All children were between the ages of 5 and 14 years. The deaf children were from a range of language and communication backgrounds, and their preferred mode of communication varied. RESULTS: Speechreading skills significantly improved with age for both groups of children. There was no effect of hearing status on speechreading ability, and children from both groups showed similar performance across all subtests of the ToCS. CONCLUSION: The ToCS is a valid and reliable assessment of speechreading ability in school-age children that can be used to measure individual differences in performance in speechreading ability.

Longitudinal patterns of emerging literacy in beginning deaf and hearing readers.

The emerging reading and spelling abilities of 24 deaf and 23 hearing beginning readers were followed over 2 years. The deaf children varied in their language backgrounds and preferred mode of communication. All children were given a range of literacy, cognitive and language-based tasks every 12 months. Deaf and hearing children made similar progress in literacy in the beginning stages of reading development and then their trajectories began to diverge. The longitudinal correlates of beginning reading in the deaf children were earlier vocabulary, letter-sound knowledge, and speechreading. Earlier phonological awareness was not a longitudinal correlate of reading ability once earlier reading levels were controlled. Only letter name knowledge was longitudinally related to spelling ability. Speechreading was also a strong longitudinal correlate of reading and spelling in the hearing children. The findings suggested that deaf and hearing children utilize slightly different reading strategies over the first 2 years of schooling.

Predictors of reading development in deaf children: a 3-year longitudinal study.

The development of reading ability in a group of deaf children was followed over a 3-year period. A total of 29 deaf children (7-8 years of age at the first assessment) participated in the study, and every 12 months they were given a battery of literacy, cognitive, and language tasks. Earlier vocabulary and speechreading skills predicted longitudinal growth in reading achievement. The relations between reading and the predictor variables showed developmental change. Earlier reading ability was related to later phonological awareness skills, suggesting that deaf children might develop their phonological awareness through reading. Deaf children who had the most age-appropriate reading skills tended to have less severe hearing losses and earlier diagnoses and also preferred to communicate through speech. The theoretical implications of the role for speechreading, vocabulary and phonological awareness in deaf children's literacy are discussed.

Concurrent correlates and predictors of reading and spelling achievement in deaf and hearing school children.

Seven- and eight-year-old deaf children and hearing children of equivalent reading age were presented with a number of tasks designed to assess reading, spelling, productive vocabulary, speechreading, phonological awareness, short-term memory, and nonverbal intelligence. The two groups were compared for similarities and differences in the levels of performance and in the predictors of literacy. Multiple regressions showed that both productive vocabulary and speechreading were significant predictors of reading for the deaf children after hearing loss and nonverbal intelligence had been accounted for. However, spelling ability was not associated with any of the other measures apart from reading. For hearing children, age was the main determinant of reading and spelling ability (due to selection criterion). Possible explanations for the role of speechreading and productive vocabulary in deaf children's reading and the differences between the correlates of literacy for deaf and hearing children are discussed.