Collaborative Research: The role of perceptual and word identification spans in reading efficiency: evidence from deaf and hearing adults

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

Being able to read efficiently is critical to success in modern society. Populations with low literacy rates (e.g., individuals with dyslexia and deaf individuals) suffer from a number of negative outcomes, including poor academic and employment opportunities which can lead to reduced upward economic mobility, limited access to public information which can lead to increased fatality and health risks, as well as reduced civic engagement which can lead to increased feelings of isolation and depression.

In order to improve literacy rates in these populations, researchers first must understand the mechanisms underlying successful reading so that interventions will be appropriately targeted. Decades of literacy research and instruction have focused on the importance of language abilities (particularly vocabulary and the ability to sound out words) while largely ignoring the role of attention, perception of text in non-central (peripheral) vision, and the coordination of these processes to support efficient reading.

The investigators propose that visual and linguistic information obtained from the text in peripheral vision both play an important role in reading efficiency, but that they do so in different ways. For example, individuals with dyslexia exhibit abnormal eye movement behavior when reading text, but not when moving their eyes between simple visual elements such as dots.

This suggests that reading difficulties arise less from needing to move the eyes precisely than from the requirement to process text linguistically. Moreover, some deaf individuals are more efficient readers than their hearing counterparts, suggesting that their reading behavior may be augmented by either auditory deprivation (which may enhance visual processing abilities) or experience with American Sign Language (ASL; which may enhance linguistic processing abilities).

However, little is known about the degree to which deaf readers’ abilities are linked to their unique visual or linguistic experiences. By clarifying these mechanisms, this project has the potential to inform deaf education policy by increasing scientific understanding of the role of sign language in the cognitive development and academic success of deaf individuals.

By extension, the investigators’ work will also be useful for understanding dyslexia by revealing the distinct contributions of visual and linguistic processing to reading success that have been implicated as potential deficits that underlie dyslexia.

This project investigates the distinct contributions of non-linguistic visual processing and word recognition abilities to reading success in both hearing and deaf adults. The investigators use gaze-contingent eye tracking reading paradigms to gather reading efficiency measures (e.g., reading rate, and fine-grained eye tracking metrics) at the participant level and conduct regression analyses to investigate what abilities predict these aspects of reading proficiency.

To assess the predictors of reading ability, the investigators collect measures of general cognitive and linguistic abilities (e.g., English text comprehension, English spelling ability, English vocabulary, non-verbal IQ, and ASL comprehension), as well as conduct experiments that assess each individual’s ability to process various types of information in peripheral vision (e.g., simple visual features, English words, ASL signs), and to make eye movements to peripheral locations. By accounting for both visual and linguistic processing abilities simultaneously, and by comparing reading behavior in deaf signers and reading-matched hearing adults, the investigators are able to identify how language and/or sensory experiences impact reading processes.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.