La lectura en los alumnos sordos: Aportación del implante coclear

The aim of this study was two-fold. Firstly, to examine the role of the cochlear implant on deaf children's phonological processing abilities and its incidence at reading level, and secondly, to analyse the reading strategies they used. Our main hypothesis was that they read using a key word strategy consisting of identifying some of the words of the sentence to be read and deriving its general meaning solely on this basis. Reading, phonological, and orthographic abilities were evaluated in a sample of 71 deaf children with a profound prelingual hearing loss, and 326 hearing children from Primary and Secondary school levels. The results show that the reading level was higher in hearing compared with deaf participants, and in implanted than in the non-implanted deaf children. It is also shown that in each group the level of reading depended on metaphonological abilities. Moreover, most of the deaf participants read using a key word strategy. Finally, the age at implantation as well as its duration was related with reading level and metaphonological abilities. These results support the notion that cochlear implants, especially when they are put in early, contribute to developing phonological abilities and better literacy outcomes. © 2012 Fundación Infancia y Aprendizaje.SCOPUS: ar.j