Rhyme Generation in Deaf Students: The Effect of Exposure to Cued Speech

Abstract

).This study compares the rhyme-generation ability of deaf participants with severe to profound hearing losses from cued speech (CS) and non-cued speech (NCS) backgrounds with a hearing comparison group for consistent orthographyto-phonology (O-P) rhyming elements, or rimes (e.g., -ail in sail is always pronounced the same), and inconsistent orthography-to-phonology (I-O-P) rhyming elements where the orthographic rime (e.g., -ear) has different pronunciations in words such as bear and rear. Rhyming accuracy was better for O-P target words than for I-O-P target words. The performance of the deaf participants from CS backgrounds, although falling between that of the hearing and the NCS groups, did not differ significantly from that of the hearing group. By contrast, the performance of the NCS group was lower than that of the hearing group. Hearing and CS participants produced more orthographically different responses (e.g., blue-few), whereas participants from the NCS group produced more responses that are orthographically similar (e.g., blue-true), indicating that the hearing and CS groups rely more on phonology and the NCS group more on spelling to generate rhymes. The results support the use of cued speech for developing phonological abilities of deaf students to promote their reading abilities.Recently in the educational field there has been a resurgence of emphasis on the development of phonological abilities in hearing students. This phenomenon is related in large part to the substantial body of research correlating phonological awareness (including rhyming) in young hearing children with their subsequent reading achievement (Bradley,

The Neural Basis of Speech Perception through Lipreading and Manual Cues: Evidence from Deaf Native Users of Cued Speech

“…The empirical evidence collected in English, French, Spanish, Farsi and even Amharic (national language of Ethiopia) shows that congenitally deaf children who were exposed to CS from their earliest months by their parents and other caregivers can reach levels of mastery of spoken (phonology, lexical, morpho-syntactic) language and written language (word reading, reading comprehension, spelling) within range of age-matched hearing peers when tested at school age. Children with late and less intensive exposure (i.e., at the age of 5–6 years, and at school only) do not demonstrate the outstanding phonological and reading abilities of the early CS-users, confirming the existence of a sensitive period for language acquisition via the visual modality (Nicholls and McGill, 1982; Périer et al, 1990; Charlier and Leybaert, 2000; Leybaert, 2000; LaSasso et al, 2003; Torres and Moreno-Torres, 2006; Koo et al, 2008; LaSasso, 2010; Movallali, 2011; Heracleous et al, 2012; Colin et al, 2013; Rees and Bladel, 2013; Shull et al, 2016). …”

Understanding the Diverse Literacy Needs of Profoundly Deaf Sign-Dominant Adults in Australia

“…Focused instruction in the use of phonics has also produced consistently positive reading outcomes for hearing children (McGuinness, 1997). While there is much less comparable research in deaf education, the evaluation of speech-based visual phonics programs for deaf children have produced promising outcomes with respect to the development of their phonological awareness and reading comprehension skills (LaSasso, Crain, & Leybaert, 2003;Leybaert, Alegria, Hage, & Charlier, 1998;Narr, 2008). However, there is a realization that profoundly deaf children cannot rely on their spoken language skills when they begin to learn to read (Hermans, Knoors, Ormel, & Verhoeven, 2007).…”

Adapting Cued Speech for Welsh

“…Research into the phonological awareness and development of component reading skills of deaf children indicate that those with early and consistent exposure to cueing develop a phonological representation of words in their language (LaSasso, Crain, & Leybaert, 2003), and can learn phonic generalizations for spelling in the same way as hearing children who speak the language (Alegria, Dejean, Capouillez & Leybaert, 1990;Leybaert & Charlier, 1996;Leybaert & Lechat, 2001). Deaf children with early and consistent exposure to cueing at home and at school have demonstrated word coding, memory, and reading abilities similar to hearing peers, and superior to deaf children from other communication backgrounds (Leybaert & Charlier, 1996;Wandel, 1989).…”