Morphological Knowledge and Decoding Skills of Deaf Readers (Report‪)‬

Research on the reading achievement of deaf individuals indicates that deaf readers tend to lag behind their hearing peers, with an average reading level equivalent to the fourth grade (Allen, 1986; Conrad, 1979). Unfortunately, this achievement gap between deaf and hearing readers has remained fairly stable over the past 30 to 40 years (e.g. Strong & Prinz, 1997; Musselman, 2000). To explain this issue a number of researchers have hypothesized the cause of deaf individuals' reading difficulties. Phonological Awareness and Reading Skill