¿Los escolares sordos profundos reconocen las palabras escritas del español usando la sílaba como una unidad de procesamiento cognitivo?

The syllable frequency inhibition effect (SIFS) in Spanish reading has been extensively tested and documented, especially in adult speakers of Spanish. The present study focused on this effect in profoundly deaf schoolchildren. The sample consisted of 32 prelingually deaf schoolchildren with an average hearing loss of 96.5 dB with an average age of 14.2 years (SD = 2.1) and reading level of 10.2 years (SD = 1.1). Three control groups were taken: schoolchildren who had the same reading level as the experimental group, schoolchildren who had the same chronological age as the experimental group, and a group of adults. The results of the two lexical decision experiments (experiment 1: yes/no, experiment 2: go/no-go) showed positive evidence that profoundly deaf schoolchildren use the syllable in processing written words and that the effect was inhibitory in nature. Also, they showed many more errors in the tasks relative to the hearing. The results are discussed around syllable processing and its relation to orthographic and phonological processing in profoundly deaf people.