Profoundly deaf school children recognize Spanish written words using the syllable as a unit of cognitive processing

The syllable frequency inhibition effect (SFIE) in the reading of Spanish words is widely tested and documented, especially in Spanish-speaking adults. The present study focused on this effect in profoundly deaf schoolchildren. The sample consisted of 40 prelingually deaf schoolchildren with an average of 96.5 dB of hearing loss with an average age of 14.2 years and a reading level of 10.2 years. There were three control groups: schoolchildren with the same reading level as the experimental group, schoolchildren with 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 written word processing and that the effect was inhibitory in nature. Also, they showed many more errors in the tasks relative to the hearing participants. The results are discussed in relation to syllabic processing and its relationship to orthographic and phonological processing of profoundly deaf people.