Phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge and word recognition in Greek deaf children

The aim of the study presented in this paper was to investigate the relation between phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge in deaf children who read in the transparent Greek orthography. Preschool and school-aged deaf children (N = 24) and two comparison groups of hearing children (N = 30) were administered measures of phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge and word recognition at the beginning and at the end of the school year. The results showed different patterns of performance between the deaf and hearing groups. Three main findings emerge from the deaf participants’ performance. First, their performance did not follow the hypothesized developmental sequence (syllable rhyme phoneme); second, the participants who were above chance on phonological awareness had good letter-sound knowledge; third, some deaf children were above chance on word recognition but not on phonological awareness. These findings confirm previous evidence from studies with English-speaking and French-speaking deaf individuals and they indicate that the origins of phonological awareness in deaf individuals are orthographic rather than phonological. Letter-sound knowledge appears to play a particularly important role in the development of phonological awareness in deaf children. The various factors that influence phonological awareness and reading acquisition in deaf children will be summarized.