Lipreading and language processing by deaf children
This thesis addresses the controversy surrounding how language, and visible speech in particular, is coded by orally-educated prelingually deaf children. Three lipreading experiments were conducted with prelingually deaf and hearing children, beginning with a replication of Dodd & Hermelin (1977) and followed by two revised versions of this experiment. The results demonstrated that lipread rhyme judgement is based on visemic coding (pattern-matching of lip movements) rather than abstract phonological coding, as previously assumed (e. g. Dodd, 1987). Three further experiments used picture stimuli rather than lipread speech to approach the phonological coding question and to assess the extent of visemic coding beyond the lipread context. These experiments showed that phonological coding is unavailable to the majority of prelingually profoundly deaf children tested, although it could not be ruled out for a minority of these subjects who were immune to the visemic, orthographic and semantic distractors used in a rhyme judgement task and who showed no evidence of using articulatory coding in a pseudohomophone judgement task. In a study of spelling errors made by profoundly deaf and hearing children, again using
MacDermid, Catriona
Linguistics
Lipreading and language processing by deaf children. This thesis addresses the controversy surrounding how language, and visible speech in particular, is coded by orally-educated prelingually deaf children. Three lipreading experiments were conducted with prelingually deaf and hearing children, beginning with a replication of Dodd & Hermelin (1977) and followed by two revised versions of this experiment. The results demonstrated that lipread rhyme judgement is based on visemic coding (pattern-matching of lip movements) rather than abstract phonological coding, as previously assumed (e. g. Dodd, 1987). Three further experiments used picture stimuli rather than lipread speech to approach the phonological coding question and to assess the extent of visemic coding beyond the lipread context. These experiments showed that phonological coding is unavailable to the majority of prelingually profoundly deaf children tested, although it could not be ruled out for a minority of these subjects who were immune to the visemic, orthographic and semantic distractors used in a rhyme judgement task and who showed no evidence of using articulatory coding in a pseudohomophone judgement task. In a study of spelling errors made by profoundly deaf and hearing children, again using
language_processing deaf_child address controversy surround language visible speech particular cod orally educated deaf_child conduct deaf_hear child begin replication follow_two version experiment demonstrate rhyme judgement base coding pattern matching lip movement rather_abstract phonological coding previously_assume used picture stimuli rather speech phonological cod question ass extent coding beyond context show phonological coding unavailable majority profoundly deaf_child test although could rule minority subject immune orthographic semantic use rhyme judgement_task show evidence use articulatory cod judgement_task study spell error make profoundly deaf_hear child use