Phonological awareness, working memory and reading comprehension in deaf children

Phonological awareness and working memory are two important factors in literacy acquisition. Since auditory system plays an essential role in phonological processing, we investigated such skills in deaf population in the present study. Twenty deaf children with severe and profound bilateral sensory-neural hearing loss and twenty healthy control subjects were examined in this cross-sectional study. Children were students in second grade of public elementary schools in Karaj city (Iran). All participants were given phonological awareness, reading comprehension, visual working memory and auditory-verbal memory tests. Between-groups data analysis was processed and the relationship between task scores was investigated in the deaf group. Deaf children had significantly less scores in all tasks (p˂0.001) compared to their normal peers except for the visual working memory test. There was a positive correlation between reading comprehension and both the visual working memory and phonological awareness in the deaf group. Nevertheless no relationship was found between reading comprehension and auditory-verbal memory. Deaf children used both their phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge In the reading activity, requiring a good visual working memory. Although it seems that such children are reliant on their visual ability and not their auditory or kinetic senses in phonological acquisition