In Western countries, there are around 8-10% of school age children suffering
from mild to moderate reading difficulties. Similarly, in Hong Kong the prevalence
of reading difficulties among school age children was found to be 9.7- 12%. An
understanding of the mechanisms involved in reading helps us to determine the skills
necessary for successful reading.
The Phonological Mediation Hypothesis (PMH), which claims that
phonological recoding is a necessary phase during lexical access, is widely known
for its postulation that phonological awareness would be a significant prognostic
indicator of reading development. Theoretically, individuals who have difficulties in
phonological recoding during lexical access should also encounter reading
difficulties. Good readers with hearing impairment are, therefore, considered as
counter examples of PMH.
If the above prediction of PHM is true, skilled readers with hearing impairment
should have the ability to develop an intact phonological representation and hence
are more capable of phonological recoding. In this study, the reading behaviors of
children with hearing impairment (HI), that of their reading level matched (RL) and
that of their chronological age matched (CA) controls were compared in three
tasks—an auditory perceptual task of onset rime awareness (TAPOR); a synonym
decision task (SDT); and a homophone decision task (HDT). The results for TAPOR
showed that auditory perceptual ability (APOR) accounted for 49% of the variance in
the reading ability of children with hearing impairment. In addition, results of cross
group comparisons on the scores in TAPOR demonstrated a possible causal
relationship between APOR and reading ability in subjects with hearing impairment.
On the other hand, SDT and HDT results indicated a significant preference for
orthographic foils in RL and HI subjects with low reading ability. An increasing
tendency to choose synonyms or homophones, and a decreasing tendency to use
orthographic distractors was observed across subject groups with Primary 1, Primary
2 and Primary 6 reading abilities. A similar but delayed pattern of change in
preference for distractors was observed in HI subjects. The results only partially
agree with PMH. An alternative hypothesis—the Psycholinguistic Grain Size
Theory (PGST) — might be a better model to explain the observed results. With
reference to the results of TAPOR, the correlation between reading ability and
auditory perceptual ability could be explained in terms of the ‘availability problem’
postulated in this latter model. In the same way, the early emergence of orthographic
effect in almost all subjects except CA controls and the late emergence of a number
of reading strategies operating at different levels of grain size can be better explained
by ‘consistency problems’ and ‘granularity problems’ proposed in PGST. These
findings are considered, and directions for further studies are outlined. / published_or_final_version / Speech and Hearing Sciences / Master / Master of Philosophy
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:HKU/oai:hub.hku.hk:10722/146132 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | 張嘉恩, Cheung, Ka-yan, Winnie. |
| Contributors | Leung, MT, McPherson, DB |
| Publisher | The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) |
| Source Sets | Hong Kong University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | PG_Thesis |
| Source | http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B47233576 |
| Rights | The author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent rights) and the right to use in future works., Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License |
| Relation | HKU Theses Online (HKUTO) |
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