Fingerspelling and sign language as alternative codes for reading and writing words for Chilean deaf...

Fingerspelling and Sign Language as Alternative Codes for Readingand Writing Words for Chilean Deaf Signers

Puente, Anibal, 1945-Alvarado, Jesus M.Herrera, Valeria.

American Annals of the Deaf, Volume 151, Number 3, Summer2006, pp. 299-310 (Article)

Published by Gallaudet University PressDOI: 10.1353/aad.2006.0039

For additional information about this article

Access Provided by Utah State University Libraries at 10/21/11 9:07PM GMT

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/aad/summary/v151/151.3puente.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/aad/summary/v151/151.3puente.html

VOLUME 151, NO. 3, 2006 AMERICAN ANNALS OF THE DEAF

299

FINGERSPELLING AND SIGN LANGUAGE AS

ALTERNATIVE CODES FOR READING AND

WRITING WORDS FOR CHILEAN DEAF SIGNERS

Deaf people use systems of commu-nication based on sign language andfingerspelling. In sign language, lexicalunits are made up of a finite set of handconfigurations, spatial locations, andmovements. Manual spelling, or “fin-gerspelling,” is a system based on thealphabet in which each letter is repre-sented by a unique and discrete move-ment of the hand. The signing Deafcommunity integrates fingerspellinginto sign language for many reasons:when a concept lacks a specific sign, forproper nouns, for loan signs, or whensigns are ambiguous. Additionally, fin-gerspelling is used to form distinctionswithin a semantic category. In somesign languages—for example, American

Sign Language (ASL) and Swedish SignLanguage—a fingerspelled word oftendemonstrates a semantic contrast withan existing sign, thus making use ofborrowed vocabulary to expand thelexicon of the deaf.

The acquisition of fingerspellingwas examined by Padden and Hanson(1999) in a study involving deaf chil-dren between the ages of 8 and 14years. That study confirmed thatyounger children made more mis-takes than older children when writ-ing fingerspelled words—a differencethat was more pronounced for low-frequency words. Younger childrenunderstood the words (including un-common ones), but they had difficulty

HE STUDY examined the role of sign language and fingerspelling in thedevelopment of the reading and writing skills of deaf children andyouth. Twenty-six deaf participants (13 children, 13 adolescents), whosefirst language was Chilean Sign Language (CHSL), were examined. Theirdactylic abilities were evaluated with tasks involving the reading andwriting of dactylic and orthographic codes. The study included threeexperiments: (a) the identification of Chilean signs and fingerspelledwords, (b) the matching of fingerspelled words with commercial logos,and (c) the decoding of fingerspelled words and the mapping of thesewords onto the writing system. The results provide convergent evidencethat the use of fingerspelling and sign language is related to ortho-graphic skills. It is concluded that fingerspelling can facilitate the inter-nal representation of words and serve as a supporting mechanism forreading acquisition.

ANÍBAL PUENTE,JESÚS M. ALVARADO, AND

VALERIA HERRERA

PUENTE AND ALVARADO ARE BOTH PROFESSORS

OF PSYCHOLOGY, FACULTY OF PSYCHOLOGY,COMPLUTENSE UNIVERSITY OF MADRID, SPAIN,SOMOSAGUAS CAMPUS. PUENTE IS IN THE

DEPARTMENT OF COGNITIVE PROCESSES;ALVARADO IS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF

METHODOLOGY OF THE BEHAVIORAL

SCIENCES. PUENTE AND ALVARADO ARE ALSO

RESEARCHERS WITH THE INSTITUTE FOR

BIOFUNCTIONAL STUDIES, COMPLUTENSE

UNIVERSITY OF MADRID. HERRERA IS AN

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION,POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL, METROPOLITAN

UNIVERSITY OF SANTIAGO, CHILE.

T

16129-AAD 151, No. 3 8/18/06 2:34 PM 99

writing them. This indicates that theability to write fingerspelled wordsrequires more training, which youngerchildren lack.

Preschool-aged deaf signers beginusing simple handshapes that repre-sent words, and then spell out wordsletter by letter (Maxwell, 1984; Padden& Le Master, 1985). This group is ableto store short dactylic representationsand to memorize simple handshapes,but productive fingerspelling (series ofcomplex handshapes), which is neces-sary for constructing the dactylic repre-sentations of words, does not appearuntil knowledge of written words hasbeen attained. A noteworthy finding ofseveral studies (Musselman, 2000; Pad-den & Ramsey, 2000; Ramsey, 2004) isthat the development of fingerspellingis not observed in orally educated pop-ulations; its development is muchmore relevant in groups who have agood command of sign language. Per-haps one of the most interesting dis-coveries regarding the early use offingerspelling by deaf children is thefact that they are aware of the move-ments of fingerspelled words beforebeing able to associate these wordswith their written form (Akamatsu,1985; Maxwell, 1984, 1986, 1988).

The idea of using fingerspelling andsign language as elements of a strategydesigned to teach the deaf to read iscontroversial. The main difficulty inteaching the deaf to read arises fromthe fact that, in order for the reader toacquire both specific and nonspecificreading skills, he or she must develop aphonological awareness that will makeit possible to think about and manipu-late the structural aspects of spokenlanguage (Hoover & Gough, 1990). Abilingual education model has beenproposed to compensate for deaf stu-dents’ deficiencies in this respect. Chil-dren are exposed to a communicationsystem combining signs—borrowedfrom sign language—and spoken lan-

guage. This system is easier to masterthan pure oral language because of theuse of signs. Cummins (2001) andother advocates of bilingual education(e.g., Evans, 2004) claim that the read-ing and writing skills acquired in a firstlanguage form the foundation for thestrong development of a second lan-guage. Though this model has beenproved among the bilingual hearing,Chamberlain and Mayberry (2000)have widened it in order to explainsign language and reading acquisitionin the deaf.

The direct application of the bilin-gual theory to signing deaf readers hasbeen criticized and discussed by Mayerand Wells (1996). Their main criticismrelates to the idea that one cannotlearn to read with a knowledge of signlanguage alone, without the aid ofsome intermediary mechanism. This isbecause of the lack of equivalence be-tween ASL and English. Mayer andWells emphasize that sign languagehas no written form and that the deafgenerally lack access to spoken lan-guage. Alegria (2003) points out thatwriting represents spoken languageand that the processing of writing re-quires the use of spoken-language de-vices that are absent in sign language.Spoken language and sign languageare intrinsically different in all formalaspects of language, that is, in theirphonology and their syntax. As a con-sequence, interaction between thetwo is not immediate.

We suspect that fingerspelling canact as a complementary means ofdecoding in reading processes, andperhaps aid in the development ofphonemic awareness in signing deafchildren, though it is a manual systemfor representing the alphabetic ratherthan phonemic units of language. Fin-gerspelling cannot wholly replace signlanguage because it is too cumber-some to use as an exclusive system.But it is not merely a representational

system, either—it is an odd, language-like system with properties that are un-like those of either spoken or signedlanguages.

If one considers fingerspelling as apossible means of gaining access to theinternal lexical coding system—whichcan be used to foster word identifica-tion and, subsequently, reading—it be-comes clear that deaf readers shoulddevelop metalinguistic skills that willallow them to become aware of the in-dividual handshapes that make up fin-gerspelled words. This ability is relatedto early reading achievement and alsoaffords deaf readers advantages relatedto phonological representation (i.e.,memory durability and prompts forword identification).

Grapho-phonological conversionrules facilitate the creation of an asso-ciation between a written word and itspronunciation. If this association doesnot exist, or if it becomes altered, chil-dren cannot analyze the phonology ofwords, nor recognize pseudowords orunfamiliar words (Foster & Chambers,1973; Waters & Doehring, 1990; Wa-ters, Seidenberg, & Bruck, 1985). As a consequence, children with thesedeficiencies attain only low levels ofreading achievement due to the factthat they possess only a lexical route,and lack the sublexical (or phonologi-cal) route, which would allow them todecode written words (Goswami &Bryant, 1990; Morais, Alegria, & Con-tent, 1987; Stanovich, 1986).

An interesting question is how thedeaf, who sign but do not use phono-logical codes, can recognize words. J. Locke and V. Locke (1971) foundthat deaf people who lack intelligibleoral expressive skills use finger-spelling when asked to recall series of printed letters. Hanson, Liberman,and Shankweiler (1984) confirmedand expanded upon this finding in anexperiment on serial memory involv-ing children between the ages of 6


300

FINGERSPELLING AND SIGN LANGUAGE AS ALTERNATIVE CODES

16129-AAD 151, No. 3 8/18/06 2:34 PM 00

and 11 years. As in the work of J. Locke and V. Locke, the participantsin the study by Hanson and colleagueswere given series of letters with visual,dactylic, and phonological similarities,along with control series. The resultsprovide evidence that the deaf use fin-gerspelling as a permanent and rele-vant linguistic codification system.What is more, Hanson and colleaguesfound that deaf students consideredto be skilled readers make more fre-quent use of fingerspelling than deafpeople with inferior reading skills.

Following the same line of thoughtpursued by Hanson and colleagues(1984) and J. Locke and V. Locke(1971), Treiman and Hirsh-Pasek(1983) pointed out that just as hearingpeople are able to decode unfamiliarwritten words by referring to themeanings of more familiar spokenforms, the deaf can decode writtenwords using fingerspelling. In a previ-ous study, Hirsh-Pasek and Treiman(1982) had confirmed that novice deafreaders could distinguish signs usingfingerspelling. They had also dis-covered that while hearing childrencan segment spoken words intophonemes, deaf children who sign cansegment dactylic representations (fin-gerspelled words) into graphemes.

The findings of Hirsh-Pasek andTreiman (1982) have prompted someresearchers to propose exchanging thegrapho-phonological converter, whichis absent or deficient in the deaf, forthe handshape-grapheme converter.This converter allows the deaf to seg-ment written words into discreteunits, letters (Asensio, 1989), to rein-force their orthographic skills (Dodd,1980; Hanson, 1982), to read unfamil-iar words (Maxwell, 1984), and to ob-tain a certain level of phonologicalunderstanding (Leybaert, 2000).

One instance in which teachers usefingerspelling is the teaching of chain-ing sequences, which show the rela-

tionship among a sign, a written word,and a fingerspelled word. The system-atic use of fingerspelling to teachreading offers deaf readers not onlythe opportunity to practice their fin-gerspelling skills but also the con-venience of learning the regularorthographic sequences that charac-terize words. Fingerspelling allows thedeaf to practice using the morpholog-ical forms common in some sign lan-guages. It remains unclear whetherfingerspelling and chaining structuresalone are sufficient means by which tomaster reading, or whether they servemerely as supporting strategies.

In a series of experiments, Hirsh-Pasek (1987) discovered that finger-spelling can be used as a strategy foridentifying words. Even so, she recog-nized the limitation it presents: It is avery poor tool for learning syntax.Hirsh-Pasek concluded that finger-spelling can provide deaf readers witha means by which to connect at leastpart of their language with writing. Butgiven that the number of fingerspelledwords regularly used in sign languageis small, one could wonder how thedactylic system benefits deaf readers.Hirsh-Pasek then developed the ideaof bilexicalism, that is, teaching thefingerspelling of words from theirsigned vocabulary and teaching learn-ing concepts through sign languageand fingerspelling. As a doubly rein-forcing mechanism, bilexicalism couldpromote both vocabulary and reading.Padden and Ramsey (1998) believethat fingerspelling is connected toreading and writing by virtue of a codein the alphabetic system, and that thisconnection makes it possible to createan association between the characteris-tics of sign language (especially finger-spelling) and the characteristics ofwritten language.

Previous studies of bilexicalism havebeen conducted mainly in ASL; similarstudies involving the sign language

used in Chile do not exist. We feelthat comparing results from otherpopulations with those obtainedfrom the deaf Chilean populationprovides the opportunity for an im-portant contribution.

In Chile, the first schools for thedeaf to introduce the formal use of fin-gerspelling did so through implemen-tation of the Rochester Method. By thebeginning of the 20th century, themost highly regarded and widely ex-tended model for the education of thedeaf was the oral model, and all formsof manual language were thereforenot taught. In the 1970s, the TotalCommunication model was put intouse. This new conception of deaf edu-cation incorporated gesticular com-munication and, with it, a new regardfor fingerspelling. Current educationalapproaches are based mainly on bilin-gualism, which gives equal importanceto oral language and Chilean Sign Lan-guage (CHSL) used separately.

Up to now, no formal investigationsinto the use of sign language and fin-gerspelling have been carried out inChile. Though the general literatureon the subject can serve as a guide,there is one aspect that differentiatesCHSL from other sign languages:CHSL is framed by the characteristicsof the Spanish language, which differsfrom English in that it is a transparentlanguage (its grapheme-phoneme cor-respondence is highly regular). Conse-quently, fingerspelling might be moreeffective in developing reading in deafchildren from Spanish-speaking envi-ronments, although it still would havebenefits for children from English-lan-guage environments. This structuraldifference between the two languagescould give rise to different readingmechanisms for English-speaking andSpanish-speaking deaf readers. Therationale for this difference rests onthe assumption that the regularity ofrules in the grapheme-to-phoneme


301

16129-AAD 151, No. 3 8/18/06 2:34 PM Page 301

translation in shallow orthographieswould never force readers to developa reading strategy based on these or-thographies’ graphemic codes (Colt-heart, 1978; Conrad, 1979; Flaherty &Moran, 2004). Some researchers donot share this assumption (Perfetti,Bell, & Delaney, 1988; Sebastián-Gallés,1991)

The aim of the present study was toexamine whether deaf readers whosefirst language is CHSL use finger-spelling to identify words, whetherthis ability is related to reading andspelling, and whether fingerspellingcan provide a visual feedback thatcould constitute an advantage for or-thographic skills. More generally, ourmain objective was to understand theeffectiveness of fingerspelling in theacquisition or development of readingskills in the deaf. The study includedthree experiments: (a) the identifica-tion of Chilean signs and fingerspelledwords, (b) the matching of finger-spelled words with commercial logos,and (c) the decoding of fingerspelledwords and their mapping onto thewriting system.

Experiment 1: Identificationof Chilean Signs andFingerspelled WordsIf fingerspelling mediation is to provea productive decoding system, thenthe deaf must possess, at least, theability to differentiate between hand-shapes that represent fingerspelledwords and those that representsigned words. That is, if they cannottell the differences between signedwords and fingerspelled words, thenthey will not be able to effectively usea decoding system that maps finger-spelled rather than signed hand-shapes onto graphemes. In thepresent study, we evaluated the par-ticipants’ ability to recognize signsand fingerspelled words and, indi-rectly, to explore the relationships

that exist between these two languagetypes.

MethodParticipantsThe present study was carried out inSantiago de Chile, at the Jorge OtteGabler Public School for the Deaf,which has spent 7 years developing abilingual educative model with its stu-dents. The school serves a deaf popu-lation of more than 120 studentsbetween the ages of 2 and 18 years,the majority from lower-middle-classfamilies. The school’s teachers andteacher’s aides were either deaf usersof CHSL or were hearing and fluent inCHSL. Tests were administered to aselection of students who met fivestrictly applied requirements:

1. a hearing loss of at least 80 dB orgreater in the better ear

2. the absence of disabilities otherthan hearing loss

3. the use of CHSL as a first lan-guage

4. a knowledge of the names of theletters of the printed alphabet

5. a knowledge of the relationshipbetween each printed letter andits dactylic representation (thestudents’ teachers were con-sulted in this regard)

The participants were separatedinto two groups on the basis of ageand academic level: (a) children: ayounger group made up of 13 partici-pants between the ages of 7 and 10years and enrolled in the second andthird grades; (b) adolescents: an oldergroup made up of 13 teenagers be-tween the ages of 12 and 15 years andenrolled in the fifth through seventhgrades.

Procedure and StimuliTests were performed individuallyand took place in the mornings at the

school itself, in a separate room fromthe study participants’ classrooms.Participation in the tests was voluntary,with prior parental authorization hav-ing been secured through a writtendocument. The task consisted of de-ciding whether a stimulus was a CHSLsign or a pseudosign (an ASL sign notused in CHSL), or a fingerspelled wordor a fingerspelled pseudoword (seeFigure 1). This was a highly difficulttask because there are some strongsimilarities between CHSL and ASL;also, identical signs exist in both lan-guages (see science in Figure 1). TheCHSL pseudosigns used in Experi-ment 1 were signs taken from ASL (theparticipants did not know ASL).

So that sign recognition and finger-spelling recognition could be meas-ured, a total of 20 stimuli weredisplayed on a screen at random. Acomputer program (for a CompaqArmada 100s laptop with a 12-in TFTscreen) was designed specifically forthe experiment, displaying the imageson the screen and registering thestudy participants’ responses. Re-sponses were made with a computermouse: a left-button click for an affir-mative response or a right-buttonclick for a negative response. As train-ing for the task, several trial runs wereperformed with each participants, us-ing stimuli that did not appear in theactual test. The instructions for thetask had been previously communi-cated to the participants in CHSL.

ResultsFigure 2 shows that the adolescentsperformed well with the four types ofstimuli. However, the children—theless educated group—despite per-forming well in the identification ofsigns and adequately in the identifica-tion of fingerspelled words, had greatdifficulty identifying pseudosigns andfingerspelled pseudowords.

A within-subjects repeated-measures


302


16129-AAD 151, No. 3 8/18/06 2:34 PM Page 302

analysis of variance (ANOVA) was per-formed in order to analyze whetherthere were any differences in stimulirecognition based either on age or onthe type of stimuli that were pre-sented (signs, pseudosigns, finger-spelled words, and fingerspelledpseudowords). The analysis revealedthat there were differences in therecognition of stimuli between age

groups (F1.28 = 99.81, p < .01) and be-tween the four types of stimuli (F3.72

= 9.03, p < .01), and that there wasan interaction between the variables“age group” and “type of stimuli”(F3.72 = 9.60, p < .01).

Additionally, the conditioned proba-bilities for sensitivity (the ability to cor-rectly differentiate between an CHSLsign and a fingerspelled word) and for

specificity (the ability to correctlyidentify a pseudosign or a finger-spelled pseudoword) were measuredseparately. Figure 3 shows that sensi-tivity levels for signs were very high inboth groups and slightly lower for fin-gerspelling, more so for the children.With respect to specificity, the adoles-cents showed a much higher levelthan the children for both types ofstimuli.

Two ANOVA tests were carried outin order to contrast the statistical sig-nificance of the two factors—agegroup (children or adolescents) andtype of stimuli (signed words or fin-gerspelled words)—for the variables“sensitivity” and “specificity.”

SensitivityThe only statistically significant differ-ence we found was related to the typeof stimuli, that is to say, between the to-tal proportion of correctly identifiedsigns and fingerspelled words (F1.24 =15.19, p < .01). No differences relatedto age were found (F1.24 = 2.57, ns), norwas there any interaction between ageand type of stimuli (F1.24 = 2.52, ns).Therefore, the small difference be-tween age groups in the recognition offingerspelled words was not consid-ered significant.

SpecificityThe differences in the recognition ofpseudosigns and fingerspelled pseu-dowords between age groups (seeFigure 3) was statistically significant(F1.24 = 57.54, p < .01). The differ-ences between types of stimuli(pseudosigns or fingerspelled pseu-dowords) were not statistically sig-nificant (F1.24 = 1.63, ns), nor was the interaction between specificityand age. The differences in therecognition of the two different typesof stimuli within the group of chil-dren are therefore not consideredsignificant.


303

Figure 1

Examples of the Four Presentation Modes Used in Experiment 1

Note. (a) a pseudosign whose formative parameters do not correspond to those of Chilean Sign Lan-guage (CHSL); (b) the sign for the word science in CHSL; (c) the fingerspelling of the pseudoword marol(this word does not exist in Spanish); (d) the fingerspelling of the word reloj (“watch” in Spanish).

Figure 2

Correct Responses in the Identification of the Four Stimuli Types

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Co

rrec

t re

spo

nse

s (p

erce

nt)

Signs Pseudo-signs

Words Pseudo-words

Stimuli types

Age group 7-10 yrs.

Age group 12-15 yrs.

16129-AAD 151, No. 3 8/18/06 2:34 PM Page 303

DiscussionThe results show that the main differ-ence between the groups of differentages and academic levels is determinednot so much by a lack of knowledge oflanguages (i.e., the ability to recognizesigns and fingerspelled words) but bythe children’s limited ability to recog-nize pseudosigns and fingerspelledpseudowords. What is more, the factthat, overall, the children showed lessability to recognize fingerspelledwords than to recognize signs (see Fig-ures 2 and 3) indicates a later and as yetincomplete mastery of fingerspelling.Our results are in agreement withthose obtained by Hirsh-Pasek (1987),which show that children make moremistakes than adolescents in tasks in-volving the recognition of signs andfingerspelling. Hirsh-Pasek found a sig-nificant main effect for age: Childrenmade more mistakes and took moretime to recognize signs and finger-spelling than older students. Despitethis expected difference, the childrenon this task responded correctly 68%of the time. These data are similar to

those obtained by our own investiga-tion comparing the recognition ofsigns and the recognition of finger-spelled words. In our experiment, weconfirmed that the younger and lesseducated participants recognized signs62% of the time and fingerspelling52% of the time, versus 93% and 87%of the time for the older, more edu-cated students.

In Hirsh-Pasek (1987), the studyparticipants performed better in fin-gerspelling recognition than in therecognition of words signed in ASL.The participants in our study, how-ever, showed a greater command ofsign language than of fingerspelling,as can be observed not only in thenumber of correct responses but inthe time taken to complete the tasks.Specifically, they took 25% longer toidentify fingerspelled words than theytook to identify signs. This minor dis-crepancy between our findings andthose of Hirsh-Pasek (1987) can be ex-plained by the fact that our study par-ticipants had received more trainingwith sign language and that their fa-

miliarity with fingerspelling was morerecent and less systematic (Battison,1978; King & Quigley, 1985). In anycase, if fingerspelling is an importantpart of sign language, and if, in addi-tion, it could serve as a mediator be-tween sign language and writtenlanguage, it would be of interest toknow how the deaf use their dactylicabilities in connection with readingskills. We addressed this question inExperiment 2.

Experiment 2: MatchingFingerspelled Words WithCommercial LogosThe primary aim of the second exper-iment was to evaluate study partici-pants’ ability to read fingerspelledwords in two different modes of pres-entation (printed and manual) andtheir ability to correctly match thesefingerspelled words to their corre-sponding logos. To this end, two as-pects were evaluated: (a) participants’capacity to decode fingerspelledwords, and (b) whether their use offingerspelling was influenced by atask’s presentation mode—eitherprinted material or communicationwith a signing expert.

An additional goal of the second ex-periment was to provide a basis for de-signing efficient strategies for dactyliclearning. Experiment 2 was similar tothe experiment in Hirsh-Pasek (1987),the main difference being the inclu-sion, in this experiment, of a “printeddactylic” presentation mode thatserved to determine whether finger-spelling storage capacity (not requiredin the “printed” mode) could be usedto differentiate between skilled andnovice readers.

MethodParticipantsTwenty-four students, drawn from theoriginal 26, took part in Experiment 2.They were divided into four groups: 6


304


Figure 3

Conditioned Probability of Sensibility and Specificity in the Identification of Signs andDactylic Words

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

Co

nd

itio

ned

pro

bab

ility

Sign Dactylic word Pseudosign Pseudoword

Sensibility Specificity

Age group 7-10 yrs.


16129-AAD 151, No. 3 8/18/06 2:34 PM Page 304

children with low-level reading skills,6 children with high-level readingskills, 6 adolescents with low-levelreading skills, and 6 adolescents withhigh-level reading skills. Reading levelwas determined by the students’teachers. The study participants wereseparated according to reading levelin order to avoid confusion regardingage level.

ProcedureA list of 24 dactylic representations ofthe names of well-known products inChile and a list of their correspondinglogos, 24 of which corresponded tothe fingerspelled words, were made.To select the stimuli, a list of logos of40 brands found in Chile was given tofour deaf judges, who then selectedthe best-known of these logos. Thesejudgments determined the selectionof stimuli for the experiment. A 30 cm2 40 cm piece of poster board wasdivided into two vertical columns.The 28 logos of the following prod-ucts appeared in the first column:Nido, Ekono, Capri, Carozzi, Lan Chile,Sony, Virginia, Watts, Falabella, Camper,Condorito, Puma, El Mercurio, Chile-visión, Chef, Adidas, Leche Sur, Malloa,Nescafé, Lucchetti, Omo, Nestlé, Bata,Tucapel, Coca-Cola, Telefónica, Milo,and Zuko. The names of 24 productsappeared as dactylic representationsin the second column.

The task consisted of matchingthe word and its logo image. In the“printed dactylic” presentation mode,the experimenter selected a wordprinted in fingerspelling at randomand the study participant was askedto point to the corresponding logo.The instructions, given in CHSL toeach participant, were “Match the fin-gerspelled word and its correspon-ding logo.” This task was designed tomeasure command of fingerspellingin four different presentation condi-tions (see Figure 4):

1. Printed dactylic (PD): The exper-imenter pointed to one of thewords printed in fingerspellingand asked to student to point tothe corresponding logo.

2. Manual dactylic (MD): The ex-perimenter spelled a word withfingerspelling, and the studentpointed to the correspondinglogo.

3. Printed dactylic with practice(PDp): The student repeatedthe PD task, and his or her per-formance was evaluated follow-ing practice.

4. Manual dactylic with practice(MDp): The student repeatedthe MD task, and his or her per-formance was evaluated follow-ing practice.

The study participants performedthe four tasks in the following order:PD, MD, PDp, and MDp. For each task,they were presented with the same 24dactylic representations in random or-der, and their responses were marked

on a response sheet. For each of thefour tasks, the participants were in-structed, “Pay attention to the finger-spelling of each word before pointingto the appropriate logo.”

ResultsThe children correctly identified an av-erage of 18.12 logos, while the adoles-cents correctly identified an average of23.60 logos. In terms of reading level,the study participants with low-levelreading skills correctly identified an av-erage of 19.48 logos, while those withhigh-level reading skills correctly iden-tified an average of 21.71 logos.

We performed a repeated-measuresANOVA in order to evaluate the differ-ences, that is to say the effects, of “agegroup” and “reading level” on the fourpresentation modes. The ANOVA re-sults show that there were statisticallysignificant differences with respect toage group (F1.20 = 27.55, p < .001) andreading level (F1.22 = 5.62, p = .028),and among the four fingerspellingpresentation conditions (F3.60 = 51.30,


305

Figure 4

Examples of Three Logos and Three Dactylic Representations

Note. The task consists of matching each logo with its corresponding dactylic representation: Bata withB, Omo with C, and Milo with A.

16129-AAD 151, No. 3 8/18/06 2:34 PM Page 305

p < .001). Bonferroni post hoc analysisrevealed that the differences betweenthe sets with practice and those with-out were statistically significant (thedifference between the PD sets withand without practice was 2.41, p <.001, and the difference between theMD sets with and without practicewas 2.29, p < .001), and that therewas no difference between the differ-ent presentation conditions (printedand manual).

We also evaluated the interactionsbetween “presentation mode” and“age group” (F3.60 = 9.40, p < .001),and between “presentation mode”and “reading level” (F3.60 = 2.96, p =.030). The interaction between pres-entation conditions and age group(see Figure 5) is explained by the factthat the effects of practice on per-formance were significantly strongerin the younger group. The interactionbetween presentation conditions andreading level (see Figures 5 and 6) isexplained by the greater difficulty thestudy participants with low-level read-ing skills experienced with the manualpresentation mode versus the printedpresentation mode.

DiscussionThe differences in the fingerspellingrecognition task—which consisted ofmatching fingerspelled words withproduct logos—can be explained bythe study participants’ ages and read-ing levels.

We found that it was slightly moredifficult for participants to follow thedactylic sequences made by the ex-perimenter (MD) than to follow thoseprinted on a sheet of paper (PD), butthis difference did not reach a statisti-cally significant level. This finding sug-gests that memory storage is not aproblematic element in the process-ing of fingerspelled words. We knowthat fingerspelling is a representationof the alphabet, in which each letter is

manually represented by a single, dis-crete handshape. This may imply thatfingerspelled words are processed asa series of individual handshapes. Yetexperimental evidence indicates oth-erwise. From research on the speed offingerspelling recognition and the re-sults of memory tasks that require in-

dividual letter reporting, one mayconclude that these fingerspelledwords are processed as whole units oras meaningful subunits within words(Hanson, 1982). Thus—to strike aparallel with spoken languages—deafpeople are no more likely to processfingerspelled words as a sequence of


306


Figure 5

Correct Responses in the Fingerspelling Presentation Modes, by Age Group

Notes. PD, printed dactylic. MD, manual dactylic. PDp, printed dactylic with practice. MDp, manualdactylic with practice.

14

16

18

20

22

24

PD MD PDp MDp

Without practice With practice

Co

rrec

t re

spo

nse

s

Age group 7-10 yrs.


Figure 6

Correct Responses in the Fingerspelling Presentation Modes, by Reading Skill Level

Notes. PD, printed dactylic. MD, manual dactylic. PDp, printed dactylic with practice. MDp, manualdactylic with practice.

14

16

18

20

22

24

Co

rrec

t re

spo

nse

s

PD MD PDp MDp

Without practice With practice

Low-level reading skills

High-level reading skills

16129-AAD 151, No. 3 8/18/06 2:34 PM Page 306

individual handshapes than are hear-ing people to process spoken wordsas a sequence of discrete phonemes.

With regard to practice, we cantherefore affirm that in our sample ofdeaf signers learning was very fast(the results improved significantly inthe second session), and was inde-pendent of the presentation condi-tions, a finding that should be takeninto consideration in the establish-ment of training programs designedto teach fingerspelling. The facilitywith which fingerspelling can belearned explains the fact that it is in-frequently observed to be a first lan-guage—not only is it too awkward toimplement exclusively, but it has alsobeen observed that it requires very lit-tle effort for deaf signers to learn tocontrol fingerspelling.

In conclusion, training the deaf touse fingerspelling could help them to develop the ability to segmentwords, just as hearing people do withalphabetic writing. By using alpha-betic writing, hearing children learnto recognize that words can be seg-mented into letters, syllables, etc., andthat these units correspond to thesounds used in spoken language. Inthe case of fingerspelling, it is possiblethat the deaf convert manual gesturesinto graphemes. The deaf do developspelling skills, because they are ableto use phonological and visual codes,although preferential use is made ofthe latter type of code for most tasks.Phonological development is not spe-cific to auditory ability, but rather canbe acquired through speechreading,fingerspelling, and cued speech.

Experiment 3: DecodingFingerspelled Words andMapping Them Onto theWriting SystemThe second experiment consisted offour matching-detection tasks, whichmade it possible for study participants

to give a correct response without ac-tually being able to identify a logo. Forexample, participants could haveidentified the Zuko logo simply byknowing the link between the letter Zand the fingerspelled Z. Or they mayhave been able to identify Chilevisiónsimply because of the number ofletters in the logo and in the finger-spelled representation. (Other strate-gies may also have been used, such asrelying on words’ initial letters or onword lengths, in order to establish theconnection between a fingerspelledword and its corresponding logo.) Be-cause of this possibility for students toidentify logos by relying on cluesrather than on a complete under-standing of the relationships betweenthe fingerspelled words and the lo-gos, a test was designed to measurethe ability to transfer a fingerspelledword, originally embedded in a signedsentence, to writing. The aim of thisthird experiment was to understandhow deeply mastery of sign languageand mastery of fingerspelling are re-lated to or could serve as mediators ina writing task, which consists of read-ing and identifying dactylic represen-tations of words.

MethodParticipantsThe same students who took part in Experiment 2 participated in Exper-iment 3.

ProcedureTwenty signed sentences with one fin-gerspelled word inserted into eachwere signed by a deaf native CHSLsigner and presented in a video record-ing. Once the sentence was com-pleted, study participants were askedto answer, in writing, a question givenby the experimenter. An example sen-tence consisted of the signing of thephrase Maria’s new dress is followedby the dactylic spelling of the word

pink. After completion of this sen-tence, a few seconds were allowed topass and then the participant wasasked in CHSL, What colour wasMaria’s new dress? He or she was thensupposed to write the word pink onthe response sheet. Once the responsewas written, the next sentence was pre-sented. Three training runs were per-formed before the task was begun inorder to familiarize participants withthe process. Each participant sat at adesk facing the screen, and each wrotethe words on a response sheet. The in-structions were shown in the video, inCHSL: “Observe the sentence care-fully; pay attention to the question andwrite your answer correctly on the re-sponse sheet.”

ResultsIn terms of age group, the children’sgroup in Experiment 3 gave correctresponses for only 7.08 of the signedsentences on average, while the ado-lescents gave correct responses for18.83 sentences on average. With re-spect to the main effect of the variable“reading level,” the study participantswith low-level reading skills respondedcorrectly, on average, to 11.33 of thesigned sentences, while those withhigh-level reading skills respondedcorrectly, on average, to 14.58 of thesentences.

We performed an ANOVA in orderto evaluate the differences, that is, theeffects of “age group” and “readinglevel” on the fingerspelling task. TheANOVA results show that there werestatistically significant differences withrespect to age group (F1.20 = 104.75, p< .001) and reading level (F1.22 = 8.01,p = .01). The interaction betweenthese two variables did not reach a sta-tistically significant level (F1.22 = 1.90, p> .05), although the difference in read-ing levels among children was greater;that is to say, the children with high-level reading skills performed better


307

16129-AAD 151, No. 3 8/18/06 2:34 PM Page 307

on this task than the children with low-level reading skills.

DiscussionThe results of Experiments 2 and 3provide convergent evidence that theuse of fingerspelling and sign lan-guage can facilitate the developmentof reading and writing skills, becausethe differences in the fingerspellingtasks (both the recognition and iden-tification tasks) can be explained byage and reading level.

Several studies support the notionof a relationship between the masteryof sign language and reading. Cham-berlain and Mayberry (2000) evaluatedASL communication skills and discov-ered a positive correlation with read-ing. Different studies having foundcorrelations of between .43 and .80(Hoffmeister, 2000; Mayberry & Fis-cher, 1989; Moores et al., 1987; Padden& Ramsey, 2000; Strong & Prinz, 1997,2000).

Ross (1992) studied the use of fin-gerspelling in skilled and novice deafreaders and found that both groupsuse it. Novice readers not only use fin-gerspelling, they explore the patternsof orthographic rules and investigatethe sublexical structure of signs. Wetherefore believe it relevant to ex-plore the relationship between signlanguage and fingerspelling abilityand reading and writing ability, as webelieve fingerspelling could serve as abridge to or mediator in the develop-ment of metalinguistic skills.

General DiscussionThe aim of the present study was toexamine whether deaf students whosefirst language is CHSL use finger-spelling to identify words and if thisability is related to reading andspelling. Linguistic and reading de-velopment in the deaf can be achievedin three ways: (a) by taking advantageof any remaining auditory capacity to

strengthen oral language, (b) by de-veloping oral language with the helpof complementary communicationsystems, and (c) by promoting andinstitutionalizing the use of signlanguage. The development of orallanguage requires a great effort in thecase of people who are profoundlydeaf. Sign language, in contrast, is to-tally accessible to such individuals,and strategies involving fingerspellingtraining could represent an alternativefor acquiring reading skills.

For a long time, it was thought thata person’s access to phonological in-formation was exclusively auditory.Nowadays, however, many studies sup-port the idea that phonological infor-mation can also be nurtured, acquired,and strengthened with the help of vi-sual information (MacDougall, 1979).Fingerspelling, for example, is a visualform that reflects the graphemes thatmake up words, providing a means bywhich to gain access to the segmen-tal information of words. It is a sys-tem of support that can reinforceorthographic representations andserve as a base for the development ofrudimentary phonologic codes.

According to Ross (1992), deaf be-ginning readers whose main languageis sign language actively seek to estab-lish relationships between the sublexi-cal structure of sign language wordsand the written form of these samewords. For many generations, the deafhave learned to take advantage of thisrelationship when they learn to read.In the beginning stages of reading,written words have no reference intheir internal lexicon. But little by little,fingerspelling reveals the significanceof sequences of letters, organizingthem into an accessible code that al-lows deaf learners to acquire alpha-betic principles. Learning to fingerspellinvolves not only learning to associatemanual alphabetic configurations withtheir printed forms but also learning to

understand the interactions betweenfingerspelling and other languagesystems.

We have observed that, beforereaching adolescence, the deaf havedifficulty with sign recognition and fin-gerspelling recognition. These resultssuggest that mastering CHSL and mas-tering the reading of fingerspelling arecomplex tasks that require many yearsof practice and education. The dif-ference between children and ado-lescents is not observed in theidentification of signs, but is due fun-damentally to the difficulty youngerstudents have in identifying pseu-dosigns and fingerspelled pseudo-words. Also, the ability to read andwrite dactylic code is less developedthat the ability to read and write signedvocabulary. There are at least two pos-sible explanations for this particularfinding: (a) that the deaf are less ex-posed to the fingerspelling lexiconthan to the signed lexicon, and (b)that fingerspelling is not a natural lan-guage, and the deaf acquire it as acode as they learn the orthographicrules of language.

Our results are consistent withthose obtained by Padden and Han-son (1999) in that the comprehensionand, above all, the writing of finger-spelled words require deaf studentsto have years of experience and tohave reached a more mature age. Theeffect, however, is more clearly ob-served when the words to be writtenoccur infrequently (Leybaert, 2000).Ross (1992) found that adolescentdeaf readers use fingerspelling moreprecisely than younger deaf children.Consistent with the findings of Pad-den and Hanson and those of Ross,the results of our first two studies(i.e., Experiments 1 and 2) highlightthe significant differences betweengroups of different ages and academiclevels, demonstrating that adolescentsperform better.


308


16129-AAD 151, No. 3 8/18/06 2:34 PM Page 308

As to the role of fingerspelling inreading, we have observed how skilledreaders are able to successfully per-form the task of recognizing and stor-ing fingerspelled words in order tomatch them later to their correspon-ding logos and identify dactylic words.Our results support the notion, de-fended by Hanson and colleagues(1984), that fingerspelling is a media-tor between the printed alphabet andreading comprehension. In the pres-ent investigation we have obtained re-sults that provide evidence that deafindividuals, once they have acquireddactylic skills, use these skills as one ofthe permanent means by which theygain access to the language system.

That good or at least adequatereading skills can develop, even ifphonological awareness is severelydeficient, has been demonstrated byboth single-case (Howard & Best,1996) and group studies. The lattershow that there is considerable over-lap in phonological decoding abilitiesof proficient and poor readers (e.g.,Treiman & Hirsh-Pasek, 1983). Thefact that good word recognition canoccur in the context of poor phono-logical awareness implies that an ade-quate sight vocabulary can be built upsimply through regular exposure to asufficient number of words. This isnot to say, however, that informationabout letter-sound or other ortho-graphic-phonological relationships isnot simultaneously being learned,however slowly or imperfectly. Sometheorists have argued explicitly thatsingle-word recognition requires anamalgamation of knowledge of aword’s meaning, its phonology, andits orthography (Ehri, 1992a, 1992b).What we are suggesting here is thatlexical and nonlexical (or phonologi-cal and orthographic) strategies arelikely to have a reciprocal relation-ship. If so, children with an inadequatewhole-word system (lexical reading

strategy) may have difficulty acquiringa nonlexical reading procedure.

Fingerspelling, though it has alwaysbeen present in the teaching of deafchildren, has not received as much at-tention as other codes. Using visual-spatial configurations of the hand,fingerspelling reflects the graphemesthat make up words. As a result, ac-cess is obtained to words’ segmenta-tion information. Knowledge of eachsegment of a word facilitates itsrecognition and reconstruction. Fin-gerspelling can act as a system of sup-port which, though not analogous tophonology, can reinforce orthographicrepresentations in order to provide asystem of codes. As Perfetti and Sandak(2000) have shown, in the case of thedeaf “more is better.” Because the deafcannot acquire access to phonologicalrepresentations as hearing people do,the broadening and stimulation of mul-tiple routes could be highly beneficialto their acquisition and developmentof reading and writing.

NoteThe research for the present study wassupported by the Agencia Española deCooperación Iberoamericana, Com-plutense University of Madrid. Wethank Jesús Alegria for valuable com-ments on earlier drafts of the presentarticle. We are grateful to the staff andstudents of the Jorge Otte Gabler Pub-lic School for the Deaf (Santiago deChile).—The Authors.

ReferencesAkamatsu, T. C. (1985). Fingerspelling formu-

lae: A word is more or less the sum of itsletters. In W. Stoke & E. Volterra (Eds.), SLR‘83: Proceedings of the Third Interna-tional Symposium on Sign Language Re-search (pp. 126–132). Silver Spring, MD:Linstok Press.

Alegria, J. (2003). Deafness and reading. In T. Nunes & P. Bryant (Eds.), Handbook ofchildren’s literacy (pp. 459–489). Dor-drecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic.

Asensio, M. (1989). Los procesos de lectura enlos deficientes auditivos [Reading processes

in the hearing impaired]. Unpublished doc-toral thesis, Universidad Autónoma deMadrid, Spain.

Battison, R. (1978). Lexical borrowing inAmerican Sign Language. Silver Spring,MD: Linstok Press.

Chamberlain, C., & Mayberry, R. (2000). Theoriz-ing about the relation between AmericanSign Language and reading. In C. Chamber-lain, J. P. Morford, & R. Mayberry (Eds.), Ac-quisition of language by eyes (pp. 221–259).London: Erlbaum.

Coltheart, M. (1978). Lexical access in simplereading tasks. In G. Underwood (Ed.),Strategies of information processing (pp.151–216). London: Academic Press.

Conrad, R. (1979). The deaf school child. Lon-don: Harper & Row.

Cummins, J. (2001). ¡Qué sabemos de la edu-cación bilingüe? Perspectivas psicolinguísti-cas y sociológicas [What do we know aboutbilingual education? Psycholinguistic andsociological perspectives]. Revista de Edu-cación, 326, 37–61.

Dodd, B. (1980). The spelling abilities of pro-foundly prelingually deaf children. In U. Frith(Ed.), Cognitive processes in spelling (pp.423–440). London: Academic Press.

Ehri, L. C. (1992a). Reconceptualizing the de-velopment of sight word reading and its re-lationship to recoding. In P. H. Gough, L. C.Ehri, & R. Treiman (Eds.), Reading acquisi-tion (pp. 107–143). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Ehri, L. C. (1992b). The development of readingand spelling in children: An overview. In M.Snowling & M. Thomson (Eds.), Dyslexia: In-tegration theory and practice (pp. 63–79).London: Whurr.

Evans, C. (2004). Literacy development in deafstudents: Case studies in bilingual teachingand learning. American Annals of the Deaf,149(1), 17–27.

Flaherty, M., & Moran, A. (2004). Deaf signerswho know Japanese remember words andnumbers more effectively than deaf signerswho know English. American Annals of theDeaf, 149(1), 39–45.

Foster, K. I., & Chambers, S. M. (1973). Lexicalaccess and naming time. Journal of VerbalLearning and Verbal Behavior, 12, 627–635.

Goswami, U., & Bryant, O. (1990). Phonologicalskills and learning to read. Hove, England:Erlbaum.

Hanson, V. (1982). Use of orthographic struc-ture by deaf adults: Recognition of finger-spelled words. Applied Psycholinguistics, 3,343–356.

Hanson, V., Liberman, I., & Shankweiler, D.(1984). Linguistic coding by deaf children inrelation to beginning reading success. Jour-nal of Experimental Child Psychology, 37(1),378–393.

Hirsh-Pasek, K. (1987). The metalinguistics offingerspelling: An alternate way to increasereading vocabulary in congenitally deaf


309

16129-AAD 151, No. 3 8/18/06 2:34 PM Page 309

readers. Reading Research Quarterly, 22(4),455–473.

Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Treiman, R. (1982). Recodingin silent reading: Can the deaf childrentranslate print into a more manageableform? Volta Review, 84(5), 71–82.

Hoffmeister, R. J. (2000). A piece of the puzzleand reading comprehension in deaf chil-dren. In C. Chamberlain, J. P. Morford, & R.Mayberry (Eds.), Acquisition of languageby eyes (pp. 143–165). London: Erlbaum.

Hoover, W. A., & Gough, P. B. (1990). The simpleview of reading. Reading and Writing, 2,127–160.

Howard, D., & Best, W. (1996). Developmentalphonological dyslexia: Real word readingcan be completely normal. Cognitive Neu-ropsychology, 13, 887–934.

King, C., & Quigley, S. (1985). Reading anddeafness. San Diego, CA: College Hill Press.

Leybaert, J. (2000). Phonology acquired throughthe eyes and spelling in deaf children. Jour-nal of Experimental Child Psychology, 75,291–318.

Locke, J., & Locke, V. (1971). Deaf children’sphonetic, visual, and dactylic coding in agrapheme recall task. Journal of Experi-mental Psychology, 89(1), 142–146.

MacDougall, J. C. (1979). The development ofvisual processing and short–term memoryin deaf and hearing children. American An-nals of the Deaf, 124(1), 16–22.

Maxwell, M. (1984). A deaf child’s natural devel-opment of literacy. Sign Language Studies,44, 191–224.

Maxwell, M. (1986). Beginning reading and deafchildren. American Annals of the Deaf,131(1), 14–20.

Maxwell, M. (1988). The alphabetic principle andfingerspelling. Sign Language Studies, 59,377–404.

Mayberry, R., & Fischer, S. (1989). Lookingthrough phonological shape to lexical mean-ing: The bottleneck of non-native sign lan-guage processing. Memory and Cognition,17(6), 740–754.

Mayer, C., & Wells, G. (1996). Can linguistic inter-dependence theory support a bilingual-bicul-

tural model of literacy education for deaf stu-dents? Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Ed-ucation, 1, 93–107.

Moores, D., Kluwin, T., Johnson, R., Cox, P.,Blennerhasset, L., Kelly, L., Ewoldt, C.,Sweet, C., & Fiels, L. (1987). Factors predic-tive of literacy in deaf adolescents (FinalReport, Project No. NIH-NINCDS-83-19).Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Neuro-logical and Communicative Disorders andStroke.

Morais, J., Alegria, J., & Content, A. (1987). Therelationship between segmental analysisand alphabetic literacy: An interactive view.Cahiers de Psychologie Cognitive, 7,415–438.

Musselman, C. (2000). How do children whocan’t hear learn to read an alphabetic script?A review of the literature on reading anddeafness. Journal of Deaf Studies and DeafEducation, 5 (1), 9–31.

Padden, C., & Hanson, V. (1999). Search for themissing link: The development of skilledreading in deaf children. In H. Lane & K. Em-morey (Eds.), The sign language revisited:An anthology to honor Ursula Bellugi andEdward Klima (pp. 435–444). Mahwah, NJ:Erlbaum.

Padden, C., & Le Master, B. (1985). An alphabeton hand: The acquisition of fingerspellingin deaf children. Sign Language Studies, 47,161–171.

Padden, C., & Ramsey, C. (1998). Reading abilityin signing deaf children. Topics in LanguageDisorders, 18(4), 30–46.

Padden, C., & Ramsey, C. (2000). AmericanSign Language and reading ability in deafchildren. In C. Chamberlain, J. P. Morford,& R. Mayberry (Eds.), Acquisition oflanguage by eyes (pp. 165–189). London:Erlbaum.

Perfetti, C. A., Bell, L. C., & Delaney, S. M. (1988)Automatic (prelexical) phonetic activation insilent word reading: Evidence from back-ward masking. Journal of Memory and Lan-guage, 27, 59–70.

Perfetti, C., & Sandak, R. (2000). Reading opti-mally builds on spoken language: Implica-

tions for deaf readers. Journal of DeafStudies and Deaf Education, 5, 32–50.

Ramsey, C. (2004). What does culture have todo with the education of students who aredeaf or hard of hearing? In B. J. Bruegge-mann (Ed.), Literacy and deaf people: Cul-tural and contextual perspectives (pp.47–58). Washington, DC: Gallaudet Univer-sity Press.

Ross, D. S. (1992). Learning to read with signlanguage: How beginning deaf readersrelate sign language to written words.Unpublished master’s thesis, McGill Uni-versity, Montreal, Canada.

Sebastián–Gallés, N. (1991). Reading by analogyin a shallow orthography. Journal of Exper-imental Psychology, 17(2), 471–477.

Stanovich, K. (1986). Matthew effects inreading: Some consequences of individualdifferences in the acquisition of liter-acy. Reading Research Quarterly, 21,360–407.

Strong, M., & Prinz, P. (1997). A study of therelationship between American Sign Lan-guage and English literacy. Journal ofDeaf Studies and Deaf Education, 2(1),37–46.

Strong, M., & Prinz, P. (2000). Is American SignLanguage skill related to English literacy? InC. Chamberlain, J. P. Morford, & R. Mayberry(Eds.), Acquisition of language by eyes (pp.131–141). London: Erlbaum.

Treiman, R., & Hirsh–Pasek, K. (1983). Silentreading: Insights from second–generationdeaf readers. Cognitive Psychology, 15,39–65.

Waters, G., & Doehring, D. (1990). Reading ac-quisition in congenitally deaf children whocommunicate orally: Insights from an analy-sis of component reading, language, andmemory skills. In T. Carr & B. Levy (Eds.),Reading and its development: Componentskills approaches (pp. 323–373). San Diego,CA. Academic Press.

Waters, G., Seidenberg, M., & Bruck, M. (1985).Do children use similar processes to readand spell words? Journal of ExperimentalChild Psychology, 39(3), 511–530.


310


16129-AAD 151, No. 3 8/18/06 2:34 PM Page 310

Fingerspelling and sign language as alternative codes for reading and writing words for Chilean deaf...

Documents

Transcript of Fingerspelling and sign language as alternative codes for reading and writing words for Chilean deaf...