Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 8:3 2003
© 2003 Oxford University Press
Empirical Article |
The Importance of Processing Automaticity and Temporary Storage Capacity to the Differences in Comprehension Between Skilled and Less Skilled College-Age Deaf Readers
Gallaudet University
The prevalence of low comprehension among deaf readers has been documented for decades, yet the problem persists. Progress has been hampered by uncertainty regarding which aspects of reading competence ought to be the primary focus of concerted instructional efforts. This article examines whether temporary storage capacity and/or processing automaticity may explain the difference in comprehension between skilled and less skilled adult deaf readers. Temporary storage capacity is the ability to maintain separate bits of information in current memory while they are being processed. Processing automaticity is the ability to complete certain basic operations of reading, such as recognizing individual words and chunking sets of words into meaningful phrases, with a minimum of intentional mental effort. In this study one group of deaf adults reading at the college level and another reading at the 5th-grade level completed a battery of experimental tasks that generated multiple indicators of storage capacity and automaticity. These included the reading span task of Daneman and Carpenter (1980), an analogous addition span task, two measures of phonological processing, and a sentence-reading task that varied the demands on temporary storage and processing automaticity. Results suggest that skilled readers do not command an exceptionally large temporary storage capacity, nor do less skilled readers suffer from deficient storage capacity. The indicators of processing automaticity suggest, however, that less skilled readers must invest significantly more conscious mental effort than skilled readers to complete basic operations of reading. These findings are applied to theory related to (a) the nature of the breakdowns in comprehension faced by readers with low automaticity, (b) the interaction of low automaticity with other obstacles to comprehension, and (c) the design of practice experiences to increase the automaticity and ultimately the comprehension of deaf readers.
I am grateful to Karen Saulnier and Linda Stamper for their contributions to the completion of this research, and I thank Robert C. Johnson, Michael A. Karchmer, and Deborah Witsken for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. Correspondence can be sent to Leonard P. Kelly, Gallaudet Research Institute, Gallaudet University, Washington, DC 20002 (e-mail: leonard.kelly{at}gallaudet.edu)
Received July 22, 2002; revised October 15, 2002; accepted October 21, 2002
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  S. R. Easterbrooks and S. G. Huston The Signed Reading Fluency of Students Who Are Deaf/Hard of Hearing J. Deaf Stud. Deaf Educ., January 1, 2008; 13(1): 37 - 54. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
R. R. Kelly and M. G. Gaustad Deaf College Students' Mathematical Skills Relative to Morphological Knowledge, Reading Level, and Language Proficiency J. Deaf Stud. Deaf Educ., January 1, 2007; 12(1): 25 - 37. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
P. Miller What the Processing of Real Words and Pseudohomophones Can Tell Us about the Development of Orthographic Knowledge in Prelingually Deafened Individuals J. Deaf Stud. Deaf Educ., January 1, 2006; 11(1): 21 - 38. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|