Predicting variation in word decoding development in deaf and hard-of-hearing children.

Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children may experience difficulties in word decoding development. We aimed to compare and predict the incremental word decoding development in first grade in Dutch DHH and hearing children, as a function of kindergarten reading precursors. In this study, 25 DHH, and 41 hearing children participated. Kindergarten measures were phonological awareness (PA), letter knowledge (LK), rapid naming (RAN), and verbal short-term memory (VSTM). Word decoding (WD) was assessed at three consecutive time points (WD1, 2, 3) during reading instruction in first grade. The hearing children scored higher than the DHH children on PA and VSTM only, although the distribution of WD scores differed between the groups. At WD1, PA and RAN predicted WD efficiency in both groups; but PA was a stronger predictor for hearing children. At WD2, LK, RAN, and the autoregressor were predictors for both groups. While at WD3, only the autoregressor was a significant predictor. WD development in DHH children on average shows similar levels as in hearing children, though within the DHH group more variation was observed. WD development in DHH children is not as much driven by PA; they may use other skills to compensate. © The Author(s) 2023, Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Citation

Sascha Couvee, Loes Wauters, Harry Knoors, Ludo Verhoeven, Eliane Segers. Predicting variation in word decoding development in deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Reading and writing. 2023 May 12:1-23

PMID: 37359028

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