Reading profile in deaf adults

We examined the reading profile of deaf subjects, focusing on psy- cholinguistic variables and considering the impact of the global factor, to deter- mine whether phonological, lexical, and semantic effects would differ in some way for these individuals in comparison to hearing individuals in reading. Thir- teen deaf young adults proficient in both oral lipreading and sign language were compared to a group of hearing subjects matched for gender, age, and education. Deaf participants had longer vocal reaction times in reading aloud single words with respect to hearing subjects. However, they showed a similar reading profile to controls, being affected by psycholinguistic variables in a very similar way. Deaf individuals did not show a multiplicative effect as a function of word difficulty in their reading slowness but only a constant delay. Overall, the deficit shown by deaf participants was relatively limited and not associated with specific cognitive pro- cesses. This finding is in keeping with the idea that at least some individuals with a severe hearing impairment may reach reasonably high levels of word reading.