Morphological awareness and reading skill for deaf and hearing adults

Both deaf and hearing readers use morphological awareness skills to decode and comprehend printed English. Deaf readers, for whom phonological awareness is a relative weakness while orthographic sensitivity is a strength, may have a different relationship with morphology than similarly skilled hearing readers. This study investigated the impact of various reading sub-skills-spelling, vocabulary size, morphological awareness, and phonological awareness-on reading comprehension for deaf and hearing adult readers. Morphological awareness had a stronger relationship with reading comprehension for deaf than hearing readers, particularly for deaf readers with advanced morphological skills. Morphology and vocabulary were also more strongly related for the deaf group, indicating that deaf readers leverage morphology to expand their word knowledge. Overall, the findings highlight the unique and significant role of morphological awareness in the skilled deaf reader's "toolbox" and underscore the importance of morphological instruction in supporting the reading development of deaf individuals.