Visual prosody supports reading aloud expressively for deaf readers

Type is a wonderful tool to represent speech visually. Therefore, it can provide deaf individuals the information that they miss auditorily. Still, type does not represent all the information available in speech: it misses an exact indication of prosody. Prosody is the motor of expressive speech through speech variations in loudness, duration, and pitch. The speech of deaf readersis often less expressive because deafness impedes the perception and production of prosody. Support can be provided by visual cues that provide information about prosody—visual prosody—supporting both the training of speech variations and expressive reading. We will describe the influence of visual prosody on the reading expressiveness of deaf readers between age 7 and 18 (in this study, ‘deaf readers’ means persons with any kind of hearing loss, with or without hearing devices, who still developed legible speech). A total of seven cues visualize speech variations: a thicker/thinner font corresponds with a louder/quieter voice; a wider/narrower font relates to a lower/faster speed; a font raised above/lowered below the baseline suggests a higher/lower pitch; wider spaces between words suggest longer pauses. We evaluated the seven cues with questionnaires and a reading aloud test. Deaf readers relate most cues to the intendedspeech variation and read most of them aloud correctly. Only the raised cue is di#cult to connect to the intended speech variation at first, and a faster speed and lower pitch prove challenging to vocalize. Despite those two difficulties, this approach to visual prosody is elective in supporting speech prosody. The applied materials can form an example for typographers, type designers, graphic designers, teachers, speech therapists, and researchers developing expressive reading materials.

preliminary study exploring the relation between visual prosody and the prosodic components in sign language

Type enriched with visual prosody is a powerful tool to encourage expressive reading. Visual prosody adds cues to text to guide vocal variations in loud-ness, duration, and pitch. More vocal variations result in a less monotonous voice and thus more expression. A positive e!ect of visual prosody is known on the voice of normal hearing readers and of signed bilingual deaf readers who developed signed language and spoken language. These deaf readers rely on speech as well as sign language and both modalities can be used interchangeably to compensate each other. This preliminary study explores visual prosody in text in relation to Flemish Sign Language to see if sign language can be used to explain prosody. We asked deaf readers between 7 and 18 to relate prosodic cues to videos presenting prosodic components of Flemish Sign Language. We found that those readers connect the prosodic cues with the components in Flemish Sign Language as intended. Larger word-spacing cor-relates with a pause between signs, a wider font with a sign with ‘longer du-ration’, a thicker font with more ‘displacement’ in the sign, a raised font with a ‘faster velocity’ in the sign. However, some confusion occurred as participants seemed to extract only two prosodic components in the sign language: both the ‘faster velocity’ and ‘longer duration’ were referred to in terms of 'speed' and were not perceived as separate prosodic components. Participants were confused about why there were three cues in the text. Therefore, it is advised to re-evaluate and to re-design visual prosody for sign language with only ‘displacement’ and ‘speed’ in mind.

Word skipping in deaf and hearing bilinguals: Cognitive control over eye movements remains with increased perceptual span

Deaf readers may have larger perceptual spans than ability-matched hearing native English readers, allowing them to read more efficiently (Belanger & Rayner, 2015). To further test the hypothesis that deaf and hearing readers have different perceptual spans, the current study uses eye-movement data from two experiments in which deaf American Sign Language–English bilinguals, hearing native English speakers, and hearing Chinese–English bilinguals read semantically unrelated sentences and answered comprehension questions after a proportion of them. We analyzed skip rates, fixation times, and accuracy on comprehension questions. In addition, we analyzed how lexical properties of words affected skipping behavior and fixation durations. Deaf readers skipped words more often than native English speakers, who skipped words more often than Chinese–English bilinguals. Deaf readers had shorter first-pass fixation times than the other two groups. All groups’ skipping behaviors were affected by lexical frequency. Deaf readers’ comprehension did not differ from hearing Chinese–English bilinguals, despite greater skipping and shorter fixation times. Overall, the eye-tracking findings align with Belanger’s word processing efficiency hypothesis. Effects of lexical frequency on skipping behavior indicated further that eye movements during reading remain under cognitive control in deaf readers.

Reading without phonology: ERP evidence from skilled deaf readers of Spanish

Reading typically involves phonological mediation, especially for transparent orthographies with a regular letter to sound correspondence. In this study we ask whether phonological coding is a necessary part of the reading process by examining prelingually deaf individuals who are skilled readers of Spanish. We conducted two EEG experiments exploiting the pseudohomophone effect, in which nonwords that sound like words elicit phonological encoding during reading. The first, a semantic categorization task with masked priming, resulted in modulation of the N250 by pseudohomophone primes in hearing but not in deaf readers. The second, a lexical decision task, confirmed the pattern: hearing readers had increased errors and an attenuated N400 response for pseudohomophones compared to control pseudowords, whereas deaf readers did not treat pseudohomophones any differently from pseudowords, either behaviourally or in the ERP response. These results offer converging evidence that skilled deaf readers do not rely on phonological coding during visual word recognition. Furthermore, the finding demonstrates that reading can take place in the absence of phonological activation, and we speculate about the alternative mechanisms that allow these deaf individuals to read competently.

Emmorey_Reading_Chapter_2020

Recent neuroimaging and electrophysiological evidence reveal how the reading system successfully adapts when phonological codes are relatively coarse-grained due to reduced auditory input during development. New evidence suggests that the optimal end-state for the reading system may differ for deaf versus hearing adults and indicates that certain neural patterns that are maladaptive for hearing readers may be beneficial for deaf readers. This chapter focuses on deaf adults who are signers and have achieved reading success. Although the left-hemisphere dominant reading circuit is largely similar, skilled deaf readers exhibit a more bilateral neural response to written words and sentences compared to their hearing peers, as measured by event-related potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Skilled deaf readers may also rely more on neural regions involved in semantic processing compared to hearing readers. Overall, emerging evidence indicates that the neural markers for reading skill may differ for deaf and hearing adults.

Adult Reading Strategies

Research on literacy in deaf communities tends to concentrate on the literacy development and experiences of children and adolescents, overlooking the literacy practices that provide the foundation for effective and meaningful reading in adulthood. However, exploring the reading strategies that high-achieving deaf adults use can have a cascading impact on understandings of literacy through the lenses of neurobiology, culture, education, and beyond. This chapter synthesizes the body of research on effective reading strategies used by deaf adults, asking: What reading strategies do high-achieving deaf readers use? How do high-achieving deaf readers develop reading strategies? What do the reading strategies reveal about earlier stages of literacy development and the components of effective reading? After exploring these questions, the chapter concludes by identifying areas for future research and proposing applications of current research on adult reading strategies to improve reading experiences and instruction for deaf and hard-of-hearing children.