Linguistic Skills and Text Reading Comprehension in Prelingually Deaf Readers: A Systematic Review.

Purpose: Despite the considerable scientific interest in researching the reading skills of the deaf population, most of these studies focus on reading comprehension (RC) at the word or sentence level. Such reading activates different underlying language processes than text-level reading, which is mo...

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Published in:Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research Vol. 68; no. 3; pp. 1277 - 1311
Main Authors: Olujić Tomazin, Marina, Radošević, Tomislav, Hrastinski, Iva
Format: Article
Published: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Mar2025
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Mar2025
      vid: 68
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      pub: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
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        10.1044/2024_JSLHR-24-00512
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        atl: Linguistic Skills and Text Reading Comprehension in Prelingually Deaf Readers: A Systematic Review.
      aug:
        au:
          Olujić Tomazin, Marina
          Radošević, Tomislav
          Hrastinski, Iva
        affil: Department of Hearing Impairments, Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia
      su:
        Reading
        Communicative competence
        Rehabilitation
        Readability (Literary style)
        Linguistics
        Phonetics
        Vocabulary
        Hard of hearing people
        Sign language
        Systematic reviews
        MEDLINE
        Deafness
      sug:
        subj:
          Reading
          Communicative competence
          Rehabilitation
          Readability (Literary style)
          Linguistics
          Phonetics
          Vocabulary
          Hard of hearing people
          Sign language
          Translation and Interpretation Services
          Systematic reviews
          MEDLINE
          Deafness
      ab: Purpose: Despite the considerable scientific interest in researching the reading skills of the deaf population, most of these studies focus on reading comprehension (RC) at the word or sentence level. Such reading activates different underlying language processes than text-level reading, which is more akin to real-life reading literacy. The results of 36 studies on different linguistic skills and their correlation/prediction with text RC of deaf readers are reviewed, taking into account age and two language modalities (spoken language [SpL] and sign language [SL]). Method: The studies were systematized and analyzed according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses 2020 (Page et al., 2021). Results: Most reviewed studies (92%) investigated how lexical and phonological skills in SpL relate to RC in deaf people, although there is a lack of studies (33%) investigating the relationship between morphological and syntactic skills in SpL and text-based RC in deaf people. Although results on phonology are quite conflicting, studies of this review consistently confirm that lexical skills are positively related to text RC. Despite only a few published studies on morphological and syntactic skills and RC in deaf readers, the results show strong evidence of their association. This review also provides evidence of a significant cross-modal correlation between SL skills and RC, by showing that in children and adolescents, better phonological skills and receptive vocabulary are associated to better RC, whereas in adults, only studies examining grammatical skills in SL found a significant association with RC in bimodal bilingual deaf readers. Conclusions: Lexical knowledge appears to be the primary contributor to text RC in deaf readers, whereas phonological effects remain inconclusive. Although morphological and syntactic competencies' impact warrants further investigation, they demonstrate consistent association with RC. There is also clear evidence of a positive cross-modal relationship between SL skills and RC.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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