Assessing the contribution of lexical quality variables to skilled reading in profoundly deaf adults

识字率低是一个重大的社会问题，因为阅读能力差与许多负面结果有关，包括学业和就业机会差，获得公共信息的机会有限，以及公民参与减少。虽然缺陷的口语语音的特点是聋人和听力正常的人阅读困难，语音知识是否是至关重要的阅读的成功聋人个人目前还不知道，并在辩论中。至关重要的是，聋人读者如何弥补语音能力的下降，或者听力正常的成年人和识字能力低的聋人是否表现出类似的阅读模式，这些都是未知的。该项目的对象既包括高技能的聋人和听力正常的读者，也包括识字技能较低的读者，以便将反映（聋人和听力正常的人口）阅读能力差的一般影响的阅读模式与仅针对聋人读者的模式区分开来。通过研究深度失聪者的阅读过程，该项目将为阅读系统如何适应不同类型的体验（例如，减少对声音的接触，由于耳聋而引起的视觉注意力的变化）。这个项目借鉴了阅读的“三角模型”和词汇质量假设来研究如何不同的经验和知识的语音，拼写，和语义属性的单词（即，词汇质量变量）影响聋人和听力正常成人的阅读过程。该项目利用了一个适合学生的评估电池（测量阅读技能和词汇质量变量），分层回归模型，心理语言学范式（例如，转置字母操作;语义分类）和眼动追踪方法来表征阅读能力匹配的聋人和听力正常的成年人的单词和句子水平的阅读过程。此外，该项目还测试了文字处理效率假设，该假设提出，在阅读句子时，聋人读者在处理单词（和即将出现的单词）方面比听力正常的读者“更有效率”，因为他们可以在旁视（眼睛注视的地方之外）中掌握更多的信息;这些差异的出现是因为耳聋增强了对视觉外围的注意力。总体而言，该项目旨在更好地了解阅读系统的灵活性，这将有助于优化聋人和听力正常学生的识字教育。最后，首席研究员致力于通过提供一个研究环境，方便他们进入STEM领域的培训，以改善聋人学生的机会。

Low literacy levels are a significant societal concern because poor reading ability is associated with many negative outcomes, including poor academic and employment opportunities, limited access to public information, and reduced civic engagement. Although deficits in spoken language phonology are characteristic of both deaf and hearing people with reading difficulties, whether phonological knowledge is critical to reading success for deaf individuals is currently not known and under debate. Crucially, it is also unknown how deaf readers compensate for reduced phonological abilities or whether hearing and deaf adults with low literacy skills exhibit similar reading patterns. This project targets both highly skilled deaf and hearing readers, as well as those with low literacy skills, in order to tease apart reading patterns that reflect general effects of poor reading ability (across both deaf and hearing populations) from those that are specific only to deaf readers. By studying reading processes in profoundly deaf people, this project will provide novel insight into how the reading system adapts to different types of experiences (e.g., reduced access to sound, changes in visual attention due to deafness). This project draws on the "triangle model" of reading and the Lexical Quality Hypothesis to examine how distinct experience with and knowledge of the phonological, orthographic, and semantic properties of words (i.e., lexical quality variables) impact reading processes for deaf and hearing adults. The project utilizes a deaf-appropriate assessment battery (measuring reading skill and lexical quality variables), hierarchical regression modeling, psycholinguistic paradigms (e.g., transposed letter manipulations; semantic categorization), and eye tracking methods to characterize word- and sentence-level reading processes for deaf and hearing adults who are matched on reading ability. In addition, this project tests the Word Processing Efficiency hypothesis, which proposes that deaf readers are "more efficient" than hearing readers at processing words (and upcoming words) when reading sentences because they can grasp more information in parafoveal vision (outside of where your eyes are fixating); these differences arise because deafness enhances attention to the periphery of vision. Overall, this project is designed to provide a better understanding of the flexibility of the reading system which will help to optimize literacy education for deaf and hearing students. Finally, the principal investigator is committed to improving opportunities for deaf students by providing a research environment that is accessible to them and training that facilitates entrance into STEM fields.