Phonological activation during visual word recognition in deaf and hearing children.
OBJECTIVE
Phonological activation during visual word recognition was studied in deaf and hearing children under two circumstances: (a) when the use of phonology was not required for task performance and might even hinder it and (b) when the use of phonology was critical for task performance.


METHODS
Deaf children mastering written Dutch and Sign Language of the Netherlands were compared with hearing children. Two word-picture verification experiments were conducted, both of which included pseudohomophones. In Experiment 1, the task was to indicate whether the word was spelled correctly and whether it corresponded to the picture. The presence of pseudohomophones was expected to hinder performance only when phonological recoding occurred. In Experiment 2, the task was to indicate whether the word sounded like the picture, which now made phonological recoding essential in order to enable the acceptance of pseudohomophones.


RESULTS
The hearing children showed automatic activation of phonology during visual word recognition, regardless of whether they were instructed to focus on orthographic information (Experiment 1) or phonological information (Experiment 2). The deaf children showed little automatic phonological activation in either experiment.


CONCLUSIONS
Deaf children do not use phonological information during word reading.
Ormel
Ellen
E
Radboud University Nijmegen, Centre for Language Studies, Linguistics Department, Erasmusplein 1, 6525 HT, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. e.ormel@let.ru.nl
Hermans
Daan
D
Knoors
Harry
H
Hendriks
Angelique
A
Verhoeven
Ludo
L
D002648:Child; D003638:Deafness / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis