Phonological and orthographic coding in deaf skilled readers

Available online 21 June 2017Written language is very important in daily life. However, most deaf people do not achieve good reading levels compared to their hearing peers. Previous research has mainly focused on their difficulties when reading in a language with an opaque orthography such as English. In the present study, we investigated visual word recognition of deaf adult skilled readers while reading in Spanish, a language with a transparent orthography, for which obligatory phonological mediation has been claimed. Experiment 1 showed a pseudohomophone inhibitory effect in hearing but not in deaf people. Experiment 2 showed similar orthographic sensitivity, as measured by the transposed-letter effect, for both groups. These results suggest that deaf skilled readers do not rely on phonological mediation, while maintaining the same level of orthographic sensitivity as hearing readers, thus suggesting that the use of phonological coding is not required to access the lexicon and meaning in a language with a transparent orthography.This study was partially supported by grants from the Spanish Government (SEV-2015-0490, PSI2015-67353-R and PSI2015- 65689-P), by a grant from the European Research Council (ERC- 2011-ADG-295362), and by a 2016 BBVA Foundation Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators awarded to JAD