Emmorey Karen, Lee Brittany
School of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, San Diego State University, San Diego, California, USA.
Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communicative Disorders, University of California, San Diego, California, USA.
Lang Linguist Compass. 2021 Feb;15(2). doi: 10.1111/lnc3.12407. Epub 2021 Feb 26.
Deaf individuals have unique sensory and linguistic experiences that influence how they read and become skilled readers. This review presents our current understanding of the neurocognitive underpinnings of reading skill in deaf adults. Key behavioural and neuroimaging studies are integrated to build a profile of skilled adult deaf readers and to examine how changes in visual attention and reduced access to auditory input and phonology shape how they read both words and sentences. Crucially, the behaviours, processes, and neural circuity of deaf readers are compared to those of hearing readers with similar reading ability to help identify alternative pathways to reading success. Overall, sensitivity to orthographic and semantic information is comparable for skilled deaf and hearing readers, but deaf readers rely less on phonology and show greater engagement of the right hemisphere in visual word processing. During sentence reading, deaf readers process visual word forms more efficiently and may have a greater reliance on and altered connectivity to semantic information compared to their hearing peers. These findings highlight the plasticity of the reading system and point to alternative pathways to reading success.
聋人有着独特的感官和语言体验，这些体验会影响他们的阅读方式以及成为熟练读者的过程。本综述展示了我们目前对成年聋人阅读技能的神经认知基础的理解。关键的行为学和神经影像学研究被整合起来，以勾勒出成年熟练聋人读者的概况，并研究视觉注意力的变化、听觉输入和语音信息获取的减少如何影响他们对单词和句子的阅读。至关重要的是，将聋人读者的行为、过程和神经回路与具有相似阅读能力的听力正常读者进行比较，以帮助确定通向阅读成功的替代途径。总体而言，熟练的聋人读者和听力正常读者对正字法和语义信息的敏感度相当，但聋人读者对语音的依赖较少，并且在视觉单词处理中右半球的参与度更高。在句子阅读过程中，与听力正常的同龄人相比，聋人读者处理视觉单词形式的效率更高，并可能对语义信息有更大的依赖以及改变了与之的连接。这些发现凸显了阅读系统的可塑性，并指出了通向阅读成功的替代途径。
