Empirical Articles Concurrent Correlates and Predictors of Reading and Spelling Achievement in Deaf and Hearing School Children

Seven- and eight-year-old deaf children and hearing children of equivalent reading age were presented with a number of tasks designed to assess reading, spelling, productive vocab-ulary, speechreading, phonological awareness, short-termmem-ory, and nonverbal intelligence. The two groups were compared for similarities and differences in the levels of performance and in the predictors of literacy. Multiple regressions showed that both productive vocabulary and speechreading were sig-nificant predictors of reading for the deaf children after hearing loss and nonverbal intelligence had been accounted for. However, spelling ability was not associated with any of the other measures apart from reading. For hearing children, age was the main determinant of reading and spelling ability (due to selection criterion). Possible explanations for the role of speechreading and productive vocabulary in deaf child-ren’s reading and the differences between the correlates of literacy for deaf and hearing children are discussed. It is well documented that deaf children often experi-ence difficulties when learning to read, generally achieving lower levels of reading attainment in com-parison to their hearing peers (e.g., Allen, 1986