Writing composition ability and spelling competence in deaf subjects: a psycholinguistic analysis of source of difficulties

Abstract

We studied the compositional written skills and spelling competence of individuals with a severe hearing impairment, examining qualitative and quantitative characteristics of their texts, the psycholinguistic variables modulating their productions, and writing errors following a fine-grained analysis. Sixteen deaf young adults, educated in bilingual settings, were examined and compared to a group of control hearing subjects matched for gender, age, and education. Writing skills were examined through both written composition and written picture-naming tasks. Concerning compositional skills, deaf participants produced shorter and less informative texts, with fewer adjectives and subordinates, and were qualitatively worse with respect to texts produced by hearing controls. Words produced by deaf participants were those acquired earlier and facilitated by a higher lexical neighbourhood. Errors were mainly semantic, morphological, and syntactic errors, reflecting general linguistic weakness. Spelling errors were few, with phonologically nonplausible misspellings relative to controls, and with phonologically plausible ones being quite rare. In the picture-naming task, deaf people had a greater number of all types of errors with respect to their text, including semantic and morphological errors. Their spelling performance featured mainly phonologically nonplausible misspellings, while phonologically plausible ones were relatively few and comparable to controls. Overall, the writing of deaf adults reveal limitations in grammar and lexical-sematic linguistic competence. This was associated with spelling deficits characterized mainly by the poorer use of phonological sublexical spelling procedures. However, in an ecologic context, their spelling deficits appear not so important as has been claimed in the literature.

Writing Development in DHH Students: A Bimodal Bilingual Approach

“…To the best of this author’s knowledge, no previous study has described the development of adjective use in DHH children. Some studies have reported incidentally that DHH individuals seem to produce fewer adjectives than their typically-hearing peers ( Asker-Árnason et al., 2012 ; Mayer et al., 2016 ; Vizzi et al., 2022 ). Unlike the previously mentioned studies, the present study did not include a typically hearing control group, so no direct comparison in adjective use could be made.…”

“…There are few studies of DHH students’ use of adjectives, but those that exist demonstrate that the DHH students write fewer adjectives than their typically hearing peers, and that the vocabulary of this group is less varied ( Asker-Árnason et al., 2012 ; Mayer, Watson, Archbold, Ng, & Mulla, 2016 ; Vizzi, Angelelli, Iaia, Risser, & Marinelli, 2022 ).…”

Writing Development and Translanguaging in Signing Bilingual Deaf Children of Deaf Parents

“…These scholars apply the monolingual view in which the norms of monolinguals are upheld as the standard. For example, multiple comparative studies provide evidence that deaf children are delayed in language and literacy compared to hearing monolinguals (Kyle and Harris 2011;Mayer and Trezek 2020;Vizzi et al 2022). Vizzi et al (2022) said, "Deaf individuals generally present with difficulties in reading and writing acquisition .…”

Spelling deficits in children with intellectual disabilities: Evidence from a regular orthography

“…Moreover, in this population, a high rate of phonological misspellings, such as substitutions of consonants and vowels differing only in one single distinctive feature and simple phoneme-to grapheme conversion errors. Overall, spelling more than reading (and particularly, a fine-grained analysis of misspellings) may reveal unresolved phonological processing deficits and residual language difficulties in individuals with atypical/delayed oral language development ( Angelelli et al, 2016 ; see also Chilosi et al, 2009 ; Vizzi et al, 2022 ).…”