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Fingerspelling as a Novel Gateway into Reading Fluency in Deaf Bilinguals

Studies have shown that American Sign Language (ASL) fluency has a positive impact on deaf individuals’ English reading, but the cognitive and cross-linguistic mechanisms permitting the mapping of a visual-manual language onto a sound-based language have yet to be elucidated. Fingerspelling, which r...

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Autores principales: Stone, Adam, Kartheiser, Geo, Hauser, Peter C., Petitto, Laura-Ann, Allen, Thomas E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4591273/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26427062
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139610
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author Stone, Adam
Kartheiser, Geo
Hauser, Peter C.
Petitto, Laura-Ann
Allen, Thomas E.
author_facet Stone, Adam
Kartheiser, Geo
Hauser, Peter C.
Petitto, Laura-Ann
Allen, Thomas E.
author_sort Stone, Adam
collection PubMed
description Studies have shown that American Sign Language (ASL) fluency has a positive impact on deaf individuals’ English reading, but the cognitive and cross-linguistic mechanisms permitting the mapping of a visual-manual language onto a sound-based language have yet to be elucidated. Fingerspelling, which represents English orthography with 26 distinct hand configurations, is an integral part of ASL and has been suggested to provide deaf bilinguals with important cross-linguistic links between sign language and orthography. Using a hierarchical multiple regression analysis, this study examined the relationship of age of ASL exposure, ASL fluency, and fingerspelling skill on reading fluency in deaf college-age bilinguals. After controlling for ASL fluency, fingerspelling skill significantly predicted reading fluency, revealing for the first-time that fingerspelling, above and beyond ASL skills, contributes to reading fluency in deaf bilinguals. We suggest that both fingerspelling—in the visual-manual modality—and reading—in the visual-orthographic modality—are mutually facilitating because they share common underlying cognitive capacities of word decoding accuracy and automaticity of word recognition. The findings provide support for the hypothesis that the development of English reading proficiency may be facilitated through strengthening of the relationship among fingerspelling, sign language, and orthographic decoding en route to reading mastery, and may also reveal optimal approaches for reading instruction for deaf and hard of hearing children.
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spelling pubmed-45912732015-10-09 Fingerspelling as a Novel Gateway into Reading Fluency in Deaf Bilinguals Stone, Adam Kartheiser, Geo Hauser, Peter C. Petitto, Laura-Ann Allen, Thomas E. PLoS One Research Article Studies have shown that American Sign Language (ASL) fluency has a positive impact on deaf individuals’ English reading, but the cognitive and cross-linguistic mechanisms permitting the mapping of a visual-manual language onto a sound-based language have yet to be elucidated. Fingerspelling, which represents English orthography with 26 distinct hand configurations, is an integral part of ASL and has been suggested to provide deaf bilinguals with important cross-linguistic links between sign language and orthography. Using a hierarchical multiple regression analysis, this study examined the relationship of age of ASL exposure, ASL fluency, and fingerspelling skill on reading fluency in deaf college-age bilinguals. After controlling for ASL fluency, fingerspelling skill significantly predicted reading fluency, revealing for the first-time that fingerspelling, above and beyond ASL skills, contributes to reading fluency in deaf bilinguals. We suggest that both fingerspelling—in the visual-manual modality—and reading—in the visual-orthographic modality—are mutually facilitating because they share common underlying cognitive capacities of word decoding accuracy and automaticity of word recognition. The findings provide support for the hypothesis that the development of English reading proficiency may be facilitated through strengthening of the relationship among fingerspelling, sign language, and orthographic decoding en route to reading mastery, and may also reveal optimal approaches for reading instruction for deaf and hard of hearing children. Public Library of Science 2015-10-01 /pmc/articles/PMC4591273/ /pubmed/26427062 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139610 Text en © 2015 Stone et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Stone, Adam
Kartheiser, Geo
Hauser, Peter C.
Petitto, Laura-Ann
Allen, Thomas E.
Fingerspelling as a Novel Gateway into Reading Fluency in Deaf Bilinguals
title Fingerspelling as a Novel Gateway into Reading Fluency in Deaf Bilinguals
title_full Fingerspelling as a Novel Gateway into Reading Fluency in Deaf Bilinguals
title_fullStr Fingerspelling as a Novel Gateway into Reading Fluency in Deaf Bilinguals
title_full_unstemmed Fingerspelling as a Novel Gateway into Reading Fluency in Deaf Bilinguals
title_short Fingerspelling as a Novel Gateway into Reading Fluency in Deaf Bilinguals
title_sort fingerspelling as a novel gateway into reading fluency in deaf bilinguals
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4591273/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26427062
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139610
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