Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Prelingually, profoundly deaf individuals, due to their hearing impairment, would not be expected to have the same access to phonological information as hearing individuals. They might therefore have difficulties in using phonological structure to relate different morphological forms of words. Deaf and hearing readers' sensitivity to the morphological structure of English words was tested in the present study by using a lexical decision (word/nonword classification) task. Target words were primed 10 trials earlier by themselves (e.g., think primed by think), by morphologically related words (e.g., think primed by thought), or by orthographically related words (e.g., think primed by thin). Response times of both hearing and deaf college students to target words were facilitated when primed by themselves and also when primed by morphological relatives. Response times of subjects in neither group were facilitated to targets primed by orthographically related but morphologically unrelated words. These results indicate that deaf readers, like hearing readers, are sensitive to underlying morphophonological relationships among English words.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Chomsky, N. and Halle, M. ( 1968). The Sound Pattern of English (New York).

Conrad, R. ( 1979). The Deaf School Child (London).

Dannenbring, G.L. and Briand, K. ( 1982). Semantic priming and the word repetition effect in a lexical decision task. Canadian Journal of Psychology , 36, 435-444.

Dodd, B. ( 1980). The spelling abilities of profoundly pre-lingually deaf children. In U. Frith (ed.), Cognitive Processes in Spelling (London), pp. 423-440.

Dodd, B. and Hermelin, B. ( 1977). Phonological coding by the prelinguistically deaf . Perception & Psychophysics, 21, 413-417 .

Feldman, L.B. ( 1984). Structure of the noun system. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association , Toronto, Ontario.

Feldman, L.B. (in press). Phonological and morphological analysis by skilled readers of Serbo-Croatian. In A. Allport , D. MacKay , W. Prinz and E. Scheerer (eds.), Language Perception and Production (London).

Feustel, T.C. , Shiffrin, R.M. and Salasoo, A. ( 1983). Episodic and lexical contributions to the repetition effect in word identification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 112, 309-346.

Fischer, F.W. , Shankweiler, D. and Liberman, I.Y. ( 1985). Spelling proficiency and sensitivity to word structure . Journal of Memory and Language, 24, 423-441.

10.

Forbach, G.B. , Stanners, R.F. and Hochhaus, L. ( 1974). Repetition and practice effects in a lexical decision task. Memory & Cognition, 2, 337-339.

11.

Forster, K.I. and Davis, C. ( 1984). Repetition priming and frequency attenuation in lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 10, 680-698.

12.

Fowler, C.A. , Napps, S.E. and Feldman, L. ( 1985). Relations among regular and irregular morphologically related words in the lexicon as revealed by repetition priming. Memory & Cognition, 13, 241-255.

13.

Freyd, P. and Baron, J. ( 1982). Individual differences in acquisition of derivational morphology. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior , 21, 282-295.

14.

Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests (Second Edition) (1978). Prepared by W.H. MacGinitie (Boston).

15.

Hanson, V.L. (in press). Access to spoken language and the acquisition of orthographic structure: Evidence from deaf readers. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

16.

Hanson, V.L. , Shankweiler, D. and Fischer, F.W. ( 1983). Determinants of spelling ability in deaf and hearing adults: Access to linguistic structure. Cognition, 14, 323-344.

17.

Henderson, L. , Wallis, J. and Knight, D. ( 1984). Morphemic structure and lexical access. In H. Bouma and D.G. Bouwhuis (eds.), Attention and Performance X: Control of Language Processes (London), pp. 211-226.

18.

Hirsh-Pasek, K. and Freyd, P. ( 1983). From print to meaning: Word identification through morphological analysis. Paper presented at the August meeting of the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles, CA.

19.

Hirsh-Pasek, K. and Freyd, P. ( 1984). Taking the Latin and Greek out of English: Morphological analysis by hearing and deaf readers. Paper presented at the October meeting of the Boston University Conference on Language Development , Boston, MA.

20.

Karchmer, M.A. , Milone, M.N., Jr. and Wolk, S. ( 1979). Educational significance of hearing loss at three levels of severity. American Annals of the Deaf, 124, 97-109.

21.

Lichtenstein, E.H. (in press). The relationships between reading processes and English skills of deaf college students: Part II. Applied Psycholinguistics .

22.

Mackay, D.G. ( 1978). Derivational rules and the internal lexicon. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 17, 61-71.

23.

Murrell, G.A. and Morton, J. ( 1974). Word recognition and morphemic structure. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 102, 963-968.

24.

Napps, S.E. and Fowler, C.A. (submitted). Formal relations among words and the organization of the mental lexicon .

25.

Scarborough, D.L. , Cortese, C. and Scarborough, H.S. ( 1977). Frequency and repetition effects in lexical memory . Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 3, 1-17.

26.

Stanners, R.F. , Neiser, J.J. , Hernon, W.P. and Hall, R. ( 1979). Memory representation for morphologically related words . Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18, 399-412.

27.

Taft, M. and Forster, K.I. ( 1975). Lexical storage and retrieval of prefixed words . Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 14, 638-647.

28.

Thorndike, E.L. and Lorge, I. ( 1944). The Teacher's Word Book of 30,000 Words (New York) .

Morphophonology and Lexical Organization in Deaf Readers

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References