Root Causes of Reading Difficulties in Written Language for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing People:Word Coding Deficits or Language Knowledge Deficits?
Investigating the root causes of reading challenges in written language for deaf and hard-of-hearing people(DHH)has long been a central topic in this field of research.Based on the Simple View of Reading(SVR)theory,this paper summarizes two hypotheses that trigger reading difficulties in DHH individuals:a Word Coding Deficit(WCD)focusing on phonological awareness,and a Language Knowledge Deficit(LKD)on both vocabulary knowledge and syntactic awareness.Specifically,it has been suggested that phonological awareness may be a consequence,rather than a prerequisite,for the development of reading ability.DHH individuals often rely on visual compensatory strategies,such as orthography or lip reading,to foster and develop phonological awareness.In addition,the predictive effect of vocabulary knowledge on reading performance diminishes as the difficulty of the reading material increases.In contrast,syntactic awareness remains a stable predictor in text reading for the DHH individuals.Future studies should comprehensively consider the interactions among language,cognition and ecology,and employ cognitive neuroscience and computational modeling to examine the neural mechanisms of reading processing,and to predict and identify the types of reading deficits in DHH individuals,in order to validate or revise the existing theoretical hypotheses.
deaf and hard-of-hearing people(DHH)written language readingWord Coding Deficit(WCD)Language Knowledge Deficit(LKD)