Santiago Torres Monreal

Reading Levels of Spanish Deaf Students.

The reading levels of a population of 93 Spanish deaf students were examined. All study participants had prelingual profound hearing loss; their ages ranged from 9 to 20 years. All were enrolled in compulsory education during 2002–2003 in the Canary Islands (Spain). They were evaluated with sentence and text comprehension subtests from the Evaluation of Reading Processes of Primary Education Students, whose Spanish acronym is PROLEC (Cuetos, Rodríguez, & Ruano, 1996). A questionnaire on reading attitude was also used (Espín, 1987). Study results were consistent with those of previous research: Deaf students, at the end of their primary school education (mean age 13 years), have reading levels similar to or lower than the reading levels of hearing students at the onset of primary school education (mean age 7 years). These deaf students also have an indifferent attitude toward reading.THE READING LEVELS of a population of 93 Spanish deaf students were examined. All study participants had prelingual profound hearing loss; their ages ranged from 9 to 20 years. All were enrolled in compulsory education during 2002-2003 in the Canary Islands (Spain). They were evaluated with sentence and text comprehension subtests from the Evaluation of Reading Processes of Primary Education Students, whose Spanish acronym is PROLEC (Cuetos, Rodríguez, & Ruano, 1996). A questionnaire on reading attitude was also used (Espín, 1987). Study results were consistent with those of previous research: Deaf students, at the end of their primary school education (mean age 13 years), have reading levels similar to or lower than the reading levels of hearing students at the onset of primary school education (mean age 7 years). These deaf students also have an indifferent attitude toward reading.

The Role of Cued Speech in the Development of Spanish Prepositions

The aim of the present study was to advance the knowledge of the linguistic development of students with prelingual profound deafness, especially the acquisition and use of prepositions in Spanish, a lexical category with an important role in verbal comprehension. The researchers sought to learn the level of mastery students with prelingual profound deafness can achieve in the command of prepositions, depending on the system of communication they have been exposed to: classic oralism, Cued Speech, or signed language. The results show that the different systems of communication contribute, to different degrees, to the acquisition of Spanish prepositions, with the best results being obtained with Cued Speech.

Desarrollo lingüístico de un caso de sordera prelocutiva más trastorno por déficit atencional (TDAH)

Resumen En este informe se describe de manera restrospectiva el desarrollo linguistico de una nina con sordera profunda prelocutiva, que fue admitida para un estudio longitudinal de larga duracion. El objetivo principal era evaluar el efecto del uso simultaneo del implante coclear (IC) temprano y la palabra complementada (LPC). Desde los 15 meses hasta los 6 anos de edad, fue rehabilitada en el modelo oral complementado (MOC). Durante este periodo se grabaron 159 muestras de habla de 30 min cada una, que forman el CORPUS-MOC, disponible en CHILDES. Fueron objeto de estudio el desarrollo prelinguistico —balbuceo canonico, inventario fonetico y primeras palabras— y el linguistico —fonologia, lexico, gramatica y pragmatica—. Como el desarrollo linguistico no era el esperado para un caso de sordera con IC+LPC, se indagaron otras hipotesis. A los 4 anos de uso del IC se confirmo el TDAH, que fue tratado con metilfenidato, y se reanalizaron los datos desde la perspectiva de sordera+TDAH, en la presuncion de que ambas discapacidades estaban presentes desde el principio. Se contraponen los rasgos diferenciales del desarrollo linguistico entre sordera tipica y sordera+TDAH.