Developing a Structural Model of Reading: The Role of Hearing Status in Reading Development Over Time

• Published in: Journal of deaf studies and deaf education Vol. 18; no. 4; pp. 489 - 512
• Main Authors: Coppens, Karien M., Tellings, Agnes, Schreuder, Robert, Verhoeven, Ludo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cary, NC Oxford University Press 01.10.2013; Oxford Publishing Limited (England)
• Subjects: Auditory perception; Biological and medical sciences; Case-Control Studies; Child; Child Development; Children; Comparative studies; Comprehension; Correlation analysis; Deaf education; Deafness; Decryption; Ear, auditive nerve, cochleovestibular tract, facial nerve: diseases, semeiology; Empirical Articles; Empirical Research; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Handicap; Hearing loss; Hearing Loss - physiopathology; Humans; Longitudinal Studies; Male; Medical sciences; Models, Theoretical; Netherlands; Non tumoral diseases; Otorhinolaryngology. Stomatology; Persons With Hearing Impairments; Psychology and medicine; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reading; Reading comprehension; Students; Teaching methods; Trucks; Vocabulary; Words; Netherlands; Human; Vocabulary; Verbal comprehension; Auditory disorder; Cognition; Hearing loss; Reading; Language; Follow up study; Lexical decision; Language development; ENT disease; Primary school; Sensory handicap; Performance; Child
• ISSN: 1081-4159; 1465-7325
• DOI: 10.1093/deafed/ent024

The purpose of the present study was to develop a structural model of reading based on the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (Perfetti & Hart, 2002). Data from a 4-year longitudinal study of Dutch primary school children with and without hearing loss were used to conduct an exploratory analysis of how lexical components (i.e., decoding skills, lexical decision, and lexical use) relate to one another and to reading comprehension. Our structural model supports a positive role of the quality of the mental lexicon for reading comprehension. Furthermore, it was possible to apply the same conceptual model of reading development to both groups of children when incorporating hearing status as a grouping variable. However, a multigroup comparison model showed that the predictive values of the relations between the different tasks differed for the two groups.