Peer Reviewed Journal Article & References

[loml]

Phonology Acquired through the Eyes and Spelling in Deaf Children*1, , *2

Jacqueline Leybaert
Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
Received 7 April 1999; revised 21 September 1999. Available online 26 March 2002.





Abstract

Hearing and deaf children, ranging in age from 6 years 8 months to 14 years 4 months, and matched for general spelling level, were required to spell high-frequency and low-frequency words. Of interest was performance in relation to degree of exposure to Cued Speech (CS), which is a system delivering phonetically augmented speechreading through the visual modality. Groups were (a) hearing children, (b) deaf children exposed early and intensively to CS at home (CS-Home), and (c) deaf children exposed to CS later and at school only (CS-School). Most of the spelling productions of hearing children as well as of CS-Home children were phonologically accurate for high-frequency as well as for low-frequency words. CS-School children, who had less specified phonological representations, made a lower proportion of phonologically accurate spellings. These findings indicate that the accuracy of phonological representations, independent of the modality (acoustic versus visual) through which spoken language is perceived, determines the acquisition of phonology-to-orthography mappings. Analyses of the spelling productions indicate that the acquisition of orthographic representations of high precision depends on fully specified phonological representations.

Author Keywords: deafness; spelling; speechreading; Cued-Speech; phonology; morphology

References

1. P. G. Aaron, V. Keetay, M. Boyd, S. Palmatier and J. Wacks, Spelling without phonology: A study of deaf and hearing children. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10 (1998), pp. 1–22. Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

2. J. Alegria, B. Charlier and S. Mattys, The role of lip-reading and Cued-Speech in the processing of phonological information in French-educated deaf children. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 11 (1999), pp. 451–472. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

3. J. Alegria and P. Mousty, On the development of lexical and non-lexical spelling procedures of French-speaking, normal and disabled children. In: G. D. A. Brown and N. C. Ellis, Editors, Handbook of normal and disturbed spelling development: Theory, processes and interventions, Wiley, Chichester (1994), pp. 211–226.

4. J. Alegria and P. Mousty, The development of spelling procedures in French-speaking, normal and reading-disabled children: Effects of frequency and lexicality. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 63 (1996), pp. 312–338. Abstract | PDF (204 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

5. G. D. A. Brown, Connectionism, phonology, reading and the regularity effect in developmental dyslexia. Brain and Language 59 (1997), pp. 207–235. Abstract | Abstract + References | PDF (158 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

6. G. D. A. Brown and R. P. W. Loosemore, Computational approaches to normal and impaired spelling. In: G. D. A. Brown and N. C. Ellis, Editors, Handbook of normal and disturbed spelling development: Theory, processes and interventions, Wiley, Chichester (1994), pp. 319–337.

7. M. Bruck and R. Treiman, Phonological awareness and spelling in normal children and dyslexics: The case of initial consonant clusters. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 50 (1990), pp. 156–178. Abstract | Full Text + Links | PDF (1497 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

8. M. Bruck, R. Treiman, M. Caravolas, F. Genesee and M. Cassar, Spelling skills of children in whole language and phonics classrooms. Applied Psycholinguistics 19 (1998), pp. 669–684.

9. V. Burden and R. Campbell, The development of word-coding skills in the born deaf: An experimental study of deaf school-leavers. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 12 (1994), pp. 331–349. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

10. R. Campbell, Spelling in prelingual deafness. In: G. D. A. Brown and N. C. Ellis, Editors, Handbook of normal and disturbed spelling development: Theory, processes and interventions, Wiley, Chichester (1994), pp. 249–259.

11. R. Campbell, B. Dodd and D. Burnham. Hearing by eye, Psychology Press, Hove (1998).

12. Charlier, B, &, Leybaert, J. (in press), The rhyming skills of deaf children educated with phonetically augmented speechreading, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

13. A. Content, M. Radeau and P. Mousty, BRULEX, une base de données lexicales informatisée pour le français écrit et parlé. L'Année Psychologique 90 (1990), pp. 551–566. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

14. O. Cornett, Cued Speech. American Annals of the Deaf 112 (1967), pp. 3–13.

15. B. Dodd, The phonological system of deaf children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders 41 (1976), pp. 185–198. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

16. B. Dodd, The spelling abilities of profoundly pre-linguistically deaf children. In: U. Frith, Editor, Cognitive processes in spelling, Academic Press, New York (1980), pp. 423–443.

17. B. Dodd, Lip-reading, phonological coding and deafness. In: B. Dodd and R. Campbell, Editors, Hearing by eye: The psychology of lip-reading, Erlbaum, Hillsdale (1987), pp. 163–175.

18. B. Dodd, B. McIntosh and L. Woodhouse, Early lipreading ability and speech and language development of hearing-impaired pre-schoolers. In: R. Campbell, B. Dodd and D. Burnham, Editors, Hearing by eye, Psychology Press, Hove (1998), pp. 229–242.

19. P. Duchnowski, L. D. Braida, D. Lum, M. Sexton, J. Krause and S. Banthia, Automatic generation of cued speech for the deaf: Status and outlook. In: P. Duchnowski, L. D. Braida, D. Lum, M. Sexton, J. Krause and S. Banthia, Editors, Proceedings of AVSP '98 (1998), pp. 161–167.

20. L. Ehri, Reconceptualizing the development of sight word learning and its relationship to recoding. In: P. Gough, L. Ehri and R. Treiman, Editors, Reading acquisition, Erlbaum, Hillsdale (1992), pp. 107–143.

21. L. Ehri, Grapheme–phoneme knowledge is essential for learning to read words in English. In: J. L. Metsala and L. C. Ehri, Editors, Word recognition in beginning literacy, Erlbaum, Hillsdale (1998), pp. 3–40.

22. N. P. Erber, Speech perception by profoundly hearing-impaired children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 44 (1979), pp. 225–270.

23. U. Frith, Beneath the surface of developmental dyslexia. In: K. E. Patterson, J. C. Marshall and M. Coltheart, Editors, Surface dyslexia, Erlbaum, London (1985), pp. 301–330.

24. A. I. Gates and E. H. Chase, Methods and theories of learning to spell tested by studies of deaf children. Journal of Educational Psychology 17 (1926), pp. 289–300. Abstract | PDF (561 K) | Full Text via CrossRef

25. E. J. Gibson, A. Shurcliff and A. Yonas, Utilization of spelling patterns by deaf and hearing children. In: H. Levin and J. P. Williams, Editors, Basic studies on reading, Basic Books, New York (1970), pp. 57–73.

26. C. Hage, J. Alegria and O. Périer, Cued Speech and language acquisition: The case of grammatical gender morpho-phonology. In: C. Hage, J. Alegria and O. Périer, Editors, Advances in cognition, education and deafness, Gallaudet Univ. Press, Washington (1991).

27. V. L. Hanson, Phonological processing without sound. In: S. A. Brady and D. P. Shankweiler, Editors, Phonological processes in literacy: A tribute to Isabelle Y. Liberman, Erlbaum, Hillsdale (1991), pp. 153–162.

28. V. L. Hanson, D. Shankweiler and F. W. Fischer, Determinants of spelling ability in deaf and hearing adults: access to linguistic structure. Cognition 14 (1983), pp. 323–344. SummaryPlus | Full Text + Links | PDF (1905 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

29. Hickson, L, Woodyatt, G, Cue, C, &, Dodd, B. (in press), A longitudinal study of the linguistic abilities of children with severe and profound hearing impairment.

30. H. W. Hoeman, C. E. Andrews, V. A. Florian, S. A. Hoemann and C. J. Jensema, The spelling proficiency of deaf children. American Annals of the Deaf 121 (1976), pp. 489–493.

31. J. Leybaert and J. Alegria, Spelling development in deaf and hearing children: Evidence for use of morpho-phonological regularities in French. Reading and Writing 7 (1995), pp. 89–109. Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

32. J. Leybaert, J. Alegria, C. Hage and B. Charlier, The effect of exposure to phonetically augmented lipspeech in the prelingual deaf. In: R. Campbell, B. Dodd and D. Burnham, Editors, Hearing by eye: Vol. 2. Advances in the psychology of speechreading and auditory–visual speech, Psychology Press, Hove (1998), pp. 283–301.

33. J. Leybaert and A. Content, Reading and spelling acquisition in two different teaching methods: A test of the independence hypothesis. Reading and Writing 7 (1995), pp. 65–88. Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

34. J. Leybaert and D. Marchettti, Visual rhyming effects in deaf children. In: J. Leybaert and D. Marchettti, Editors, Proceedings of the ESCAM workshop on audio-visual speech processing (1997), pp. 13–16.

35. M. Lobrot. Lire, E.S.F, Paris (1973).

36. H. McGurk and J. MacDonald, Hearing lips and seeing voices. Nature 264 (1976), pp. 746–748. Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

37. G. Nicholls and D. Ling, Cued Speech and the reception of spoken language. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 25 (1982), pp. 262–269. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

38. Nunes, T, Bryant, P, &, Bindman, M. 1997, Spelling and grammar—The necsed move. In, C. Perfetti, L. Rieben, & M. Fayol, (Eds.), Learning to spell: Research, theory, and practice across languages, (pp, 151, – 171, ), Hillsdale, NJ, Erlbaum.

39. R. Peereman and A. Content, LEXOP: A lexical database providing orthography–phonology statistics for French monosyllabic words. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers 31 (1999), pp. 376–379. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

40. C. A. Perfetti, The representation problem in reading acquisition. In: P. B. Gough, L. C. Ehri and R. Treiman, Editors, Reading acquisition, Erlbaum, Hillsdale (1992), pp. 145–174.

41. C. A. Perfetti, The psycholinguistics of spelling and reading. In: C. Perfetti, L. Rieben and M. Fayol, Editors, Learning to spell: Research, theory, and practice across languages, Erlbaum, Hillsdale (1997), pp. 21–39.

42. O. Périer, B. L. Charlier, C. Hage and J. Alegria, Evaluation of the effects of prolonged Cued Speech practice upon the reception of spoken language. In: I. G. Taylor, Editor, The education of the deaf: Current perspectives, Croom Helm, Beckenham (1988), pp. 616–625.

43. L. Sprenger-Charolles and L. Siegel, A longitudinal study of the effects of syllabic structure on the development of reading and spelling skills in French. Applied Psycholinguistics 18 (1997), pp. 485–505.

44. M. C. Templin, A comparison of the spelling achievement of normal and defective hearing subjects. Journal of Educational Psychology 39 (1948), pp. 337–346. Abstract | PDF (527 K) | Full Text via CrossRef

45. R. Treiman. Beginning to spell: A study of first grade children, Oxford Univ. Press, New York (1993).

46. R. Treiman, Why spelling? The benefits of incorporating spelling into beginning reading instruction. In: J. Metsala and L. Ehri, Editors, Word recognition in beginning literacy, Erlbaum, Hillsdale (1998), pp. 289–313.

47. R. Treiman and M. Cassar, Effects of morphology on children's spelling of final consonant clusters. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 63 (1996), pp. 141–170. Abstract | PDF (170 K) | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

48. J. Véronis, Etude quantitative sur le système graphique et phono-graphique du français. Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive 6 (1986), pp. 501–531. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

49. B. E. Walden, R. A. Prosek, A. A. Montgomery, C. K. Scherr and C. J. Jones, Effect of training on the visual recognition of consonants. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 20 (1977), pp. 130–145. View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus

50. Wandel, J. E. 1990, Use of internal speech in reading by hearing impaired students in Oral, Total Communication and Cued Speech programs. Unpublished master's thesis, Columbia University, New York.

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Volume 75, Issue 4, April 2000, Pages 291-318

 

[Interpretrator]

Were these deaf children pre- or postlingually deaf?

 

[jillio]

Good question. And, just a point....unpublished master's theses are not peer reviewed journal articles.

 

[loml]

Interpretrator - You can find the answer to your question in this article, published as I stated, in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology ,Volume 75, Issue 4, April 2000, Pages 291-318.

 

[jillio]

Where is Boult when you need a link? And, don't you know the answer? If you read the article, and not just the abstract, you shouldhave that information. Surely you know that just an abstract provides only minimal inforamtion about the study, and cannot be used to support a position.

 

[Interpretrator]

Interpretrator - You can find the answer to your question in this article, published as I stated, in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology ,Volume 75, Issue 4, April 2000, Pages 291-318.

Hmm...

Reply hazy, try again.

 

[loml]

Seek an ye shall find

Hmm...

Interpretrator -
For you to focus on one variable leads me to believe that you have already formulated a biased opinion. Best to read the entire article yourself. If for some reason you are having dificulty with this you may pm me.

 

[Interpretrator]

For you to focus on one variable leads me to believe that you have already formulated a biased opinion.

First of all that "one variable" is about the single most important one when it comes to language acquisition and proficiency in deaf children. Second of all, you obviously have some kind of automatic defenses put in place about this if you consider my ASKING a question to mean that I have formulated a "biased opinion." (All opinions are, by their nature, biased.)

If I had already formulated my opinion, I would not have asked the question.

Best to read the entire article yourself.

No. Best to provide more than an abstract missing a great deal of info and a huge list of references if you are trying to make some kind of point. If you wish to convince me, you must present your argument, not send me in search of it. Until then you have only convinced me that you are able to cut and paste some info.

For the record, I met one of the very few cued speech transliterators in the L.A. area and tried to set up a time to observe her work as I was interested to see how it worked, but unfortunately her semester ended and then she moved before I could. So don't go making assumptions based on your own biases, please.

 

[loml]

First of all that "one variable" is about the single most important one when it comes to language acquisition and proficiency in deaf children. Second of all, you obviously have some kind of automatic defenses put in place about this if you consider my ASKING a question to mean that I have formulated a "biased opinion." (All opinions are, by their nature, biased.)

Interpretrator -Providing a link to the article may not have enabled you to view it as it requires membership/enrollement status. I offer to you an opportunity to view the entire article, please pm me if you wish me to forward the article to you.

You asking the question, does for me, show your bias. It also indicates to me your lack of understanding of CS and literacy via CS.

For the record, I met one of the very few cued speech transliterators in the L.A. area and tried to set up a time to observe her work as I was interested to see how it worked, but unfortunately her semester ended and then she moved before I could. So don't go making assumptions based on your own biases, please.

Interpretrator - If you are sincerely interested in Cued Speech, I can direct you to materials and individuals who would be happy to share the knowledge, experiences and skill set of CS with you. For a person who already has spoken English and ASL, simply observing CS, would not benefit you.

 

[ASLGAL]

What is with all the cloak and dagger stuff?

You started the conversation..so..post the article or a clean clear link to it.

Were these deaf children pre- or postlingually deaf?

a more than fair and valid question.

 

[jillio]

First of all that "one variable" is about the single most important one when it comes to language acquisition and proficiency in deaf children. Second of all, you obviously have some kind of automatic defenses put in place about this if you consider my ASKING a question to mean that I have formulated a "biased opinion." (All opinions are, by their nature, biased.)

If I had already formulated my opinion, I would not have asked the question.



No. Best to provide more than an abstract missing a great deal of info and a huge list of references if you are trying to make some kind of point. If you wish to convince me, you must present your argument, not send me in search of it. Until then you have only convinced me that you are able to cut and paste some info.

For the record, I met one of the very few cued speech transliterators in the L.A. area and tried to set up a time to observe her work as I was interested to see how it worked, but unfortunately her semester ended and then she moved before I could. So don't go making assumptions based on your own biases, please.

Manipulating that one variable withinthe study has the effect of skewing the results obtained, and provides information on generalizability. It seems to have become a trend to post abstracts that do not provide enough information to either support or refute a point. But when the entire article is read, it limitations alone indicate very different results than the ones the poster was claiming from reading an abstract alone.

BTW...hopw goes it with the teaching, Interpretator?

 

[jillio]

Interpretrator -Providing a link to the article may not have enabled you to view it as it requires membership/enrollement status. I offer to you an opportunity to view the entire article, please pm me if you wish me to forward the article to you.

You asking the question, does for me, show your bias. It also indicates to me your lack of understanding of CS and literacy via CS.





Interpretrator - If you are sincerely interested in Cued Speech, I can direct you to materials and individuals who would be happy to share the knowledge, experiences and skill set of CS with you. For a person who already has spoken English and ASL, simply observing CS, would not benefit you.

I am in agreement with ASLGAL. You brought this point up and it is up to you to support it with sources. Otherwise, you are simply throwing out unsubstantiated ideas that cannot be supported with logic or research.

 

[Interpretrator]

You asking the question, does for me, show your bias. It also indicates to me your lack of understanding of CS and literacy via CS.

I'm done with this. I asked an honest question and got back a load of crap. You had a chance to advance your cause and blew it.

BTW...hopw goes it with the teaching, Interpretator?

Hey, thanks for asking! I don't start until early September but I'm busily writing the curricula for the beginning and intermediate classes. It's a fun challenge and I'm particularly enjoying the opportunities I have to compare ASL with English in ways that I don't think deaf college students ever get from their ESL classes. I also took the opportunity to buy a sweet new laptop so I can use it in class to make things more visual, as I pity a class forced to rely solely on my incredibly bad whiteboard drawing skills.

 

[jillio]

I'm done with this. I asked an honest question and got back a load of crap. You had a chance to advance your cause and blew it.



Hey, thanks for asking! I don't start until early September but I'm busily writing the curricula for the beginning and intermediate classes. It's a fun challenge and I'm particularly enjoying the opportunities I have to compare ASL with English in ways that I don't think deaf college students ever get from their ESL classes. I also took the opportunity to buy a sweet new laptop so I can use it in class to make things more visual, as I pity a class forced to rely solely on my incredibly bad whiteboard drawing skills.

Glad to hear things are going well, and that you are opening up new opportunities for your students. We just hired a new Deaf ASL teacher who uses no voice ever, and it has really opened the eyes of the students that had hearing instructors prior.

I just invested in a new laptop, myself. Like a kid with a new toy!

Keep us posted on the new venture. Glad you are so excited about it.

 

[Interpretrator]

We just hired a new Deaf ASL teacher who uses no voice ever, and it has really opened the eyes of the students that had hearing instructors prior.

One word of caution, be sure your students are ethical because I used to volunteer as a monitor in an ASL class taught by a deaf teacher where the kids would talk to each other during tests. When I showed up and they asked who I was I said "I'm the hearing police. Any sounds during the test get reported to the teacher." Better believe they behaved themselves while I was there!

Our deaf students are also going to be taking ASL classes as well as math taught in ASL. I'm pretty sure both teachers are deaf. Their only hearing teachers will be for grammar and writing as the reading teacher is also deaf.

 

[jillio]

One word of caution, be sure your students are ethical because I used to volunteer as a monitor in an ASL class taught by a deaf teacher where the kids would talk to each other during tests. When I showed up and they asked who I was I said "I'm the hearing police. Any sounds during the test get reported to the teacher." Better believe they behaved themselves while I was there!

Our deaf students are also going to be taking ASL classes as well as math taught in ASL. I'm pretty sure both teachers are deaf. Their only hearing teachers will be for grammar and writing as the reading teacher is also deaf.

Might be a good idea to put a proctor in there with her just in case. To date, she has signed all of her test questions, and the students have to respond in writing, so their focus has to be on her most of the time. Thanks for the heads up, though. It is something to be aware of.

So many deaf educators! That is too cool. I'll be interested in hearing how the students are doing. This is true progress!

 

[loml]

I'm done with this. I asked an honest question and got back a load of crap. You had a chance to advance your cause and blew it.

Interpretrator - I provided you with a means of obtaining the article which you are turning down. I felt rather than have ME give you the information, you would take the opportunity to read the entire article. I thought that you were looking to broaden your perpectives and enhance your skill sets with Cued Speech. As far as "my cause", I am indeed passioionate about literacy via Cued Speech. Perhaps one day you will be adventurous and enroll in a Cued Speech workshop.

 

[netrox]

Of course, there's so much bias against cued speech and their responses are consistent - "it must be this or that that caused them to be this or that." They always LOOK For a variable that would make it look biased.

Studies on cued speeck kids are pretty much the same - they do well compared to deaf using other systems.

 

[Interpretrator]

Of course, there's so much bias against cued speech and their responses are consistent - "it must be this or that that caused them to be this or that." They always LOOK For a variable that would make it look biased.

Mistaking a clarifying question for an automatic rejection of a thesis indicates a complete misunderstanding of the scientific discourse community (which includes the social sciences), and makes this entire debate not only moot but extremely annoying.

 

[jillio]

Mistaking a clarifying question for an automatic rejection of a thesis indicates a complete misunderstanding of the scientific discourse community (which includes the social sciences), and makes this entire debate not only moot but extremely annoying.

Well put!