Study title

Dataset assessing the language and literacy of children with severe–profound hearing loss, using standard measures and scales. Forty-one deaf children, aged 5-7 years, with severe-profound prelingual hearing loss were assessed on single word reading, reading comprehension, English vocabulary, phonological awareness and speech-reading at three time points (September 2014 - December 2015), one year apart (T1, T2, T3). Their progress on all measures was compared with that of a similar group of 32 hearing children of similar non-verbal IQ who were initially reading at the same level.

This project aims to identify factors predicting progress in reading and spelling among deaf children in primary school. It is timely because there have been considerable changes over the last decade both in the identification of hearing loss at birth and in the provision of sophisticated hearing aids - cochlear implants and digital sharing aids - that offer the possibility for deaf children to have greater access to spoken language. These positive changes would be expected to have a significant impact on the development of literacy, both in terms of rates of progress and on the underpinning developmental mechanisms such as use of phonological skills in reading and spelling. In order to understand the impact of these changes, children's performance in a range of reading and spelling tasks will be compared with the performance of deaf children who were assessed ten years ago. The aim will be not only to find out whether reading and spelling have significantly improved but also whether the way that deaf children learn to read and write has fundamentally changed. Our research will show what best supports the development of literacy for deaf children.