Implicit and Explicit Grammatical Factors and Reading Achievement in the Deaf

A number of investigators have noted the rather striking deficiency in the ability of the deaf to develop a high level of reading achievement. One such investigator (Furth, 1966, pp. 13-15) has speculated on the cause: "The hearing individual enjoys a comfortable mastery of the language even though he may be retarded in reading. For the deaf on the other hand, the reading level is the ceiling of linguistic competence. It is quite inappro-priate to designate this latter condition as retardation in reading. It is properly termed incompetence or deficiency in verbal lan-guage... " Reading ability in the deaf is not the same thing as word recognition: it is more aptly described as the degree to which the language of the culture has been mastered. Certainly, lack of competency in a language should be a limiting factor on one's ability to read in that language. It follows from this position that a low reading achievement level on the part of the deaf is not to be interpreted as retardation in reading, but as an index of linguistic incompetence, while an equally low level obtained by a hearing person with normal language development more often indicates an inability to recognize words or retain sequences for decoding. A reading test probably measures, then, two distinct capabilities in the two populations: (1) reading ability in the hearing and. (2) *Dr. Odom and Dr. Blanton are on the faculty of Vanderbilt University. Nash-ville, Tennessee.