Cognitive Processes of Deaf and Hearing Skilled and Less Skilled Readers

Transcription

1 Cognitive Processes of Deaf and Hearing Skilled and Less Skilled Readers Paula M. Brown Laurie C. Brewer National Technical Institute for the Deaf Rochester Institute of Technology This study was designed to investigate whether inferences about predictable events are drawn in a similar manner by deaf and hearing readers and whether the drawing of inferences varies as a function of reading level. One hundred twenty college students participated, 40 hearing and 80 deaf. The hearing students and 40 of the deaf students scored above 10.0 on the California Reading Test. The other 40 deaf students scored between 6.5 and Each subject read 40 passages representing four inference conditions. After each, they performed a lexical decision task and a comprehension task. Results indicated that passages that invited an inference provided a facilitative context for word recognition for all subjects. The deaf less skilled readers were significantly slower and made significantly more errors, supporting a difference in reading performance related to word recognition and lexical access inefficiency. Deaf skilled readers were not differentiated from hearing readers and showed evidence of rapid and accurate word decoding. It is well documented that individuals in the United States who are deaf have a difficult challenge learning to read in English. In a study by the Office of Demographic Studies at Gallaudet University, Trybus and Karchmer (1977) reported that the median reading level at age 20 years was the grade equivalent of 4.5 and that only 10% of the very best reading group (18-yearolds) read at or above the eighth-grade level. Studies reviewed by Quigley and Paul (1994) indicated that A version of this article was presented at the 18th International Congress on Education of the Deaf; Tel-Aviv, Israel; July 16 20,1995. Correspondence should be sent to Paula Brown, PhD, Department of Speech and Language, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, 52 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY ( PMBNa@RIT.EDU). Copyright 19% Oxford University Press. CCC 108M159 deaf students' reading difficulties are related to limited vocabularies, delayed acquisition of English syntax, and internalized syntactic rules that are not part of standard English. For all children, reading is a complex process of constructing meaning from text that involves linguistic knowledge, decoding processes at the letter and word levels, and higher order processes involving world knowledge, inference processes, and metacognitve strategies. Just and Carpenter (1987) proposed a cognitive theory of reading based on the view that the reading process, although fundamentally sequential in nature proceeding from one word to the next, involves several levels of representation and processes that occur in parallel and must be coordinated in order to result in an appropriate interpretation of the text. The processes involved in reading include perceptual processes that allow the encoding of words, lexical processes that access word meaning, syntactic and semantic processes that organize word meanings into larger units, inference processes that integrate information, processes that construct a representation of the text structure, and processes that construct the representation of events and objects required in the interpretation of the text. In skilled reading, according to Just and Carpenter (1987), perceptual, linguistic, and conceptual processes are automatic and occur in parallel, and the results of the various component processes are coordinated and integrated in working memory. In this view, reading involves the interaction of processes that

2 264 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 1:4 Fall 1996 have been called bottom-up or text-driven processes and top-down or preexisting conceptual processes. It is unclear how the components of the reading process interact for deaf and hard of hearing readers. It is also unclear whether skills in one component of the reading process can compensate for weaknesses in other components. Based on experimental work, Ewoldt (1981) argued that students who are deaf might compensate for their lack of syntactic knowledge of English with their world knowledge and inference processes. Quigley and Paul (1994) reviewed the experimental evidence that shows that vocabulary, syntax, and figurative use of language are key difficulties for deaf and hard of hearing students in the reading process. Arguing for an interactive model of reading that involves top-down and bottomup processing, Quigley and Paul (1994) concluded that the reading difficulties that deaf students experience may be attributed to experiential (e.g., world knowledge), cognitive (e.g., inferencing), and linguistic (e.g., word knowledge) variables. In addition, Quigley and Paul cited the importance of educational and socioeconomic variables in the reading performance of deaf students. In his discussion of the literature, Marschark (1993) argued that processes on the word recognition level contribute to the difficulties that deaf children have in reading effectively. According to Marschark, less automatic word recognition skills place demands on working memory that result in less capacity available for integration of semantic information relevant to syntactic processing. Given the importance of inferences in reading and the potential for inference processes coupled with world knowledge to compensate for limits in syntactic knowledge, is it possible that the use of inference processes would differentiate good and poor readers who are deaf? Is there a relationship between inferences drawn and reading skill? In particular, could the ability to draw and use inferences differentiate readers relative to reading skill? Inference Processes in Reading Recently, Vonk and Noordman (1990) have suggested that inferences that have been studied can be classified along two dimensions: the deducibility of the inference from the text (necessary or optional) and the contribution of the inference to the text representation (contributing to coherence or contributing to the completeness of the representation). The result is four classes of inference: necessary for coherence, necessary elaborations, possible for coherence, possible for elaborations. Their research has suggested that the inferences made depend on the reader's purpose and the reader's knowledge. Inferences are made on-line if they are related to information relevant to the reader's purpose and are more likely to be made if they deal with familiar topics. The experimental evidence indicates that readers make those inferences necessary for text coherence at the time of encoding. For example, inferences that establish the relationship of an anaphor and its antecedent (Haviland & dark, 1974; Garrod & Sanford, 1977; McKoon & Ratcliff, 1980), inferences that establish that two words refer to the same concept (McKoon & Ratcliff, 1980), and causal inferences that establish coherence between two sentences (Keenan, Baillet, & Brown, 1984; Singer & Ferreira, 1983) are most likely to be made. In addition, the experimental evidence has consistently shown a difference between the drawing of forward and backward inferences (Singer & Ferreira, 1983; see Vonk & Noordman, 1990, for review). Singer and Ferreira (1983) described backward inferences as inferences that relate current information in the text to previous information to establish text coherence. In contrast, forward inferences relate current information in the text to possible subsequent information in the text. Forward inferences may be elaborative, embellishing the text representation, thus making it more complete. Predictable events are one type of forward inference that is important to understanding the reading process, as these inferences help us explore the interaction of the text and world knowledge. Highly predictable consequences are events that are highly likely given the information in the text and one's world knowledge. For example, if the text states, "The director and the cameraman were ready to shoot the closeups when suddenly the actress fell from the 14th floor," the highly predictable consequence is that the actress died. Research on highly predictable consequences indi-

3 Cognitive Processes 265 cates that these events are encoded during reading under certain conditions (Keefe & McDaniel, 1993; McKoon & Ratcliff, 1986; Murray, Klin, & Myers, 1993; Potts, Keenan, & Golding, 1988). Potts, Keenan, and Golding (1988) concluded from their research that highly predictable events are inferred at the time of reading only if they are required for coherence. McKoon and Ratcliff (1986) argued that the inferences are made, but encoded minimally while Keefe and Mc- Daniel (1993) concluded that predictive inferences are temporarily drawn and subsequently de-activated. Finally, Murray, Klin, and Meyers (1993) found that predictive inferences were made provided that relevant information was "in focus" at the time of test. In a review of the studies on elaborative inferences, Keenan, Potts, Golding, and Jennings (1990) argued that the differences in the experimental results are a consequence of different experimental paradigms that use different experimental tasks and different test times. They argued that tasks measuring activation (lexical decision, naming, and modified Stroop tasks) rather than memory (cued recall, on-line questions, and recognition) are better measures of inferences that are occurring "on-line." Of the activation measures, naming tasks and the modified Stroop tasks are less susceptible to context checking. Context checking refers to the process at the time of test of a compatibility check between the test word and the presented sentence. Semantic compatibility between the test word and the words in the sentence could lead to differences in recognition regardless of whether a test concept was actually inferred during the time of reading. To control for priming effects due to activation for related words in the text, Keenan et al. (1990) argued that it is important to make sure that all the same words are used in the control sentences and the inference condition so any differences in the results can be attributed to the drawing of inferences rather than the result of wordbased priming. Inference Processes of Readers Who Are Deaf Little work has been done on the inference processes that deaf students use in the reading process. The work that has been done indicates that deaf students can answer questions requiring inferences in tests of reading comprehension and that deaf students do make inferences in the comprehension process, but they are not as accurate or as fast as their hearing peers. In a study of reading comprehension, Davey, La- Sasso, and Macready (1983) found that deaf students did answer inferential questions, but made more errors compared to their hearing peers. Pinhas (1984) found a similar result in a study of inferential processes of deaf and hearing readers reading between the thirdand seventh-grade levels. She presented three stories followed by literal or inferential questions. For deaf children, the stories were presented in written English or in manual English. In the signed condition, deaf and hearing children were equally accurate in their responses to literal and inferential questions. However, in the written condition, deaf children made more errors on inferential questions than literal questions. Pinhas concluded that deaf students can process inferences, but have greater difficulty than their hearing peers. Pinhas (1991) studied deaf readers from the National Technical Institute for the Deaf who were reading at the ninth-, tenth-, and eleventh-grade levels and.a group of hearing students matched for reading levels. Students read narrative passages and answered literal and inferential questions 30 seconds or 20 minutes after reading the story. She measured accuracy and speed of responses. The results indicated that hearing students made inferences at the time of reading while deaf students made inferences at the time of questioning. In a study of written recall of story narratives by hearing and deaf high-school students, Sarachan-Deily (1985) found that, although hearing readers recalled more propositions stated in the text than deaf readers, both deaf and hearing readers recalled more explicit propositions than inferences. Examining the inferences recalled in the study, Sarachan-Deily found that overall deaf and hearing readers recalled the same number of inferences; however, deaf students were more likely to recall false inferences compared to their hearing peers. As a group, deaf students were as likely to draw an incorrect inference as a correct inference. When Sarachan-Deily examined the response patterns of the good (6.9 grade level), average (5.04 grade level), and poor (3.38 grade level) deaf readers in the study, she found that the better deaf readers were more accurate

4 266 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 1:4 Fall 1996 in recalling explicit information from the text, but did not differ in the number or accuracy of recalled inferences. Davey and LaSasso (1985) examined die relations of cognitive style to reading comprehension in 48 prelingually, profoundly deaf adolescents. Their analysis showed a significant interaction between cognitive style and reading comprehension test components. Relatively field-independent students scored higher than field-dependent students when responding to inferential items in a multiple-choice format. The experimental evidence thus indicates that deaf students do make inferences in the reading process; however, there are many questions about the role of inferences in the development of reading skills and whether different types of inferences might play different roles in the development of reading skills. To date, the research on the use of inference processes by deaf readers has not used experimental methods that tap on-line processing. Based on the current studies, it is not possible to know whether deaf readers are drawing inferences while reading or at the time of comprehension testing. This study is designed to extend the research on the role of inference processes in the reading performance of deaf readers by focusing on the drawing of elaborative inferences by college deaf students who are relatively skilled readers. The study investigates whether inferences drawn about predictable events are drawn in a similar manner by deaf and hearing readers during the reading process by using an experimental method designed to detect on-line processing. In addition, the study is designed to investigate whether the drawing of these inferences varies as a function of reading level. Method To examine the drawing of predictive inferences during the process of reading, we selected an activation measure, following the logic of Keenan et al. (1990) that these are better measures of on-line processing than measures of memory. Among the activation measures, we chose a lexical decision task over a naming task because the oral naming task would be inappropriate for deaf students and would not allow us to compare the performance of deaf and hearing readers. We ensured that the words composing the sentences in the control and experimental conditions were the same to minimize semantic priming effects. The materials and procedures described in Potts, Keenan, and Golding (1988) were used in this study. The materials consisted of 40 two-sentence paragraphs with four versions per paragraph representing four experimental conditions: (1) predicted the second sentence does not refer to the inference but is consistent with it; (2) coherence the second sentence required the drawing of the inference for coherence; and (3) discontinuing the second sentence contained information that countered the information that might have been inferred from the first sentence. The fourth condition was a control condition in which similar words and concepts were contained in the paragraph, but the content would not elicit the targeted inference. The Appendix presents examples of each condition. Subjects. Three groups of college students, with 40 subjects in each group, participated in this study: hearing skilled readers, deaf skilled readers, and deaf less skilled readers. The good readers all scored above the tenth-grade level on the California Reading Test. The less skilled readers scored between 6.5 and 7.5 on the California. All of the deaf students had pure tone averages (PTAs) in the better ear greater than 90 db. Procedure. Each subject read a passage and then responded to a lexical decision task. The target was either a word representing the inferred concept or a nonword. All nonwords were orthographically acceptable. If a concept is activated or inferred during reading, it should facilitate the lexical decision and thus quicken the reaction time for words. After the lexical decision task, the subjects answered a true/false question about information explicitly stated in the first sentence of the passage. Results The reaction time analyses were conducted on correct responses only. In addition, outliers were truncated to three standard deviations (SDs) beyond a subject's mean reaction time. The correct reaction times for the

5 Cognitive Processes 267 Table 1 Reaction times on lexical decision task Condition Hearing readers Deaf skilled readers Deaf less skilled readers Predicted Nonword Word Coherence Nonword Word Disco nfirming Nonword Word Control Nonword Word M lexical decision task were submitted to a set of 3 X 4 X 2 (group X condition X word status) analyses of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures, one with subjects and the other with items as the random effect. The mean reaction times for each group in each condition appear in Table 1. There was a significant main effect for group in both the subject and item analyses, Fl (2,116) = 4.68, MSe =.11, p =.01; Fl (2,78) = 81.3, MSe =.01, p =.00. The mean reaction times for each group were as follows: hearing readers =.714, deaf skilled readers =.678, and deaf less skilled readers =.759. Post hoc Newman-Kuels comparisons among groups in the subject analysis were all significant at the.01 level. Post hoc analyses using the item analysis revealed a significant difference between the skilled and less skilled deaf readers. There was also a significant main effect for word status in both the subject and item analyses, Fl (1,116) = 41.75, MSe =.01, p =.00; Fl (1,39) = 21.43, MSe = M, p = -00. Reaction times on nonwords (M =.747) were significandy slower than reaction times on words (M =.687). Post hoc analyses revealed that all subjects were quicker to accept a target as a word (.687 sec) than to reject a target as a nonword (.747 sec). In the subject analysis, condition approached significance, Fl (3,348) = 2.37, MSe =.001,/) =.07; Fl (3,117) = 1.08, MSe =.01, p =.362, as did the interaction of condition and word status, Fl (3,348) = 2.45, MSe =.001,p=. 063; Fl(3,111) = l.08,mse =.01, p =.365. Post hoc analyses revealed that reaction times in the control condition were significantly slower than in the other three conditions. In addition, paired comparisons of word reaction times in the four conditions showed a trend for slower reaction times on words in the control condition compared to each of the other three conditions. In the item analysis there was a significant interaction of group and word status, Fl (2,116) = 1.53, MSe =.02,/. =.221; Fl (2,78) = 3.73, MSe =.01, p =.028. Post hoc analyses revealed that deaf skilled readers' reaction times on nonwords were particularly fast and did not differ significantly from their reaction times on words. In contrast, the hearing readers and the deaf less skilled readers had reaction times on words that were significantly faster than on nonwords. While the effect did not reach significance, there was an obvious pattern of slower reaction times when the lexical decision task followed a control passage (i.e., the condition X word status interaction, p =.06). This suggests that for all subjects there was some activation of the inference concept during the reading of the passages that invited such an inference. However, this activation occurred equally for all three inference passages and thus provides some support for the predictive or forward activation of concepts during reading. The lack of a group X condition interaction indicates that this trend for facilitated word recognition when the concepts are activated applied to all three groups. The proportions of correct lexical decisions were also analyzed using a 3 X 4 X 2 ANOVA. Two analyses,

6 268 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 1:4 Fall 1996 one on subjects and the other on items, were conducted. These revealed a significant main effect for group for both subjects and items, Fl (2,117) = 20.63, MSe = , p =.00; Fl (2,78) = , MSe = ,/ =.00. The hearing readers (97.3%) and the skilled deaf readers (96.0%) were more correct in their lexical decision making than the less skilled deaf readers (85.4%). Post hoc analyses confirmed 1 these differences. The group X word status interaction obtained significance in the item analysis only, Fl (2,117) = 2.29, MSe = , p =.106; Fl (2,78) = 9.0, MSe = 97.58, p =.00. Post hoc paired comparisons showed that this was the result of less skilled deaf readers having significantly more errors on nonwords than words. In contrast, the error rates for words and nonwords did not differ for the other two groups. The responses to the comprehension questions were similarly analyzed for both speed and accuracy. For the reaction time analyses, only correct responses were included and response outliers were truncated to three SDs beyond a subject's mean reaction time. There was a main effect for group in both the subject and item analyses, Fl (2,117) = 11.05, MSe = 3.53, p =.00; Fl (2,72) = , MSe =.14,/. =.00. The mean reaction times to the comprehension questions were: hearing readers = 2.11 sec, deaf skilled readers = 1.90 sec, and deaf less skilled readers = 2.59 sec. All post hoc paired comparisons in the item analysis were significant. In the subject analysis, the post hoc comparisons between the skilled and less skilled deaf readers approached significance. There were also significant main effects for both condition and word status in the subject analysis but not the item analysis (condition: Fl (3,351) = 12.21, MSe =.18, p =.00; Fl (3,108) = 1.87, MSe =.86, p =.139; word status: Fl (l,117) = 5.10,yVf^=.15,/> =.026;/2(l,36)= 1.71, MSe =.22, p =. 199). Post hoc comparisons indicated that responses were significantly slower when the passage occurred in the control condition. Responses to the comprehension question were also slower when the lexical decision task involved a nonword. In addition to these results, there was a significant interaction of group X condition X word status in the item analysis but not the subject analysis, Fl (6,351) =.83, MSe =.11,p =.551; 7=2(6,216) = 2.32, MSe =.14,/. =.034. A post hoc analysis revealed that deaf less skilled readers had a significantly slower reaction time when answering a comprehension question for a passage presented in the control condition followed by a lexical decision involving a nonword as compared to a word. The analyses on the proportion of correct responses on the comprehension questions revealed a significant main effect for group, Fl (2,117) = 68.07, MSe = , p =.00; Fl (2,78) = , MSe = 284.6, p =.00. The mean percentage correct scores for the three groups were: hearing readers = 89.9%, deaf skilled readers = 89.5%, and deaf less skilled readers = 73%. Post hoc analyses revealed that deaf less skilled readers made significantly more errors than the other two groups responding to the comprehension questions. Discussion This study has not supported a qualitative difference in inference processes or in the encoding of information for hearing and deaf skilled and less skilled readers. However, a quantitative difference has been found in both speed and accuracy of the lexical decision task. Less skilled deaf readers were slower and made more errors. This is consistent with previous studies showing that some deaf readers may not be facile in word decoding (see Marschark, 1993, for a discussion). It is important to note that this quantitative difference only occurred with deaf less skilled readers. Good deaf readers were not differentiated from hearing readers, and if anything were faster and more correct. In particular, they were faster at rejecting nonwords. Most studies investigating the reading processes of deaf individuals have used hearing readers as a comparison group. This study supports the differentiation between skilled and less skilled readers rather than between hearing and deaf readers. Future studies investigating the reading difficulties of deaf students might have increased validity if all subjects are deaf and reading skill is used as an independent variable. The evidence of rapid word decoding by the deaf good readers and the slower and more erroneous decoding by less skilled deaf readers merits attention. It should be noted that our deaf good readers were

7 Cognitive Processes 269 quicker and more correct than our hearing readers and that this facile word recognition may serve to free up cognitive resources for higher level processing. In contrast, less skilled readers may use resources for bottomup processing and have fewer resources available for tasks such as handling difficult linguistic contexts or integrating a text with world knowledge. It should be noted that the deaf less skilled readers required more time and performed less accurately on the comprehension task than the other two groups. In this experiment, the comprehension task queried the truth or falsity of information explicitly stated in the first sentence of the passage and thus relied primarily on short-term memory processes. The analyses on the reaction times to the comprehension task suggest that responses to the yes/no question were influenced by the prior lexical decision task. Comprehension reaction times were slower when the prior lexical decision involved a nonword. In addition, decision times were slower for comprehension questions about control passages. Because the comprehension questions tapped factual, explicit information conveyed in the first sentence of the paragraph, responses to the question should have been impervious to the inference condition manipulation of the text, which involved the second sentence. The slower response to the control condition passages may indicate that these passages were more difficult to comprehend or demanded more cognitive processing capacity. An alternate explanation is that the slower, and hence less certain, response to the lexical decision task influenced respondents' certainty on the subsequent comprehension task. The most interesting result on the comprehension task was the interaction of group X condition X word status. The two groups of deaf readers, skilled and less skilled, had the greatest discrepancy in comprehension reaction times on control passages that involved a lexical decision for a nonword stimulus. This result supports the existence of greater cognitive processing efficiency in skilled versus less skilled readers. More skilled readers are more efficient at accessing word knowledge than less skilled readers, and this efficiency may influence their higher-order reading processes affecting comprehension. It must be noted again that, compared to hearing readers, skilled deaf readers were significantly faster and equally correct on the lexical decision task and slightly, though nonsignificantly, faster on the comprehension task. Their cognitive processing efficiency thus appears to be an important component of their reading success. In particular, efficient lexical access enables greater allocation of cognitive resources to higher level processing tasks. Consistent with previous research, the evidence from this study supports the conclusion that deaf and hearing readers make predictive inferences during the reading process. However, there was no difference between skilled and less skilled deaf readers in their performance in the inference conditions. Thus, skilled and less skilled readers did not differ in their use of predictive inferences in the reading process. It may be informative for future research to investigate skilled and less skilled deaf readers' use of inferences that are required for text coherence in conditions wherein the topic is unfamiliar to the reader. The present findings support the need to carefully identify reading skill levels when making statements about "deaf readers." Although the study indicated the existence of lexical processing differences in less skilled readers, it did not support a general finding of such a cognitive processing deficiency in "deaf readers." In fact, the deaf skilled readers were highly efficient in their cognitive processing. Even though the words used in the lexical decision task were familiar, in a situation wherein rapid decisions must be made, less skilled readers were more uncertain and more error-prone. This inefficiency in cognitive processing of lexical information appears to have an impact on their comprehension processes. This relationship merits further exploration. This study has shown possible problems at the word recognition level but not at the level of higher inferences. However, predictive inferences have been considered some of the more easily drawn inferences, particularly in situations when they are required. The predictive inferences used in this study were familiar to a college population and thus did not call for excessive use of world knowledge. It may be that differences in drawing of more difficult inferences would be found between skilled and less skilled readers.

8 270 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 1:4 Fall 1996 Appendix Sample Paragraph Condition Predicted: Coherence: Disconfirming: Control: Inference Test Word: References The angry swarm of bees flew out of the hive and landed on Joan's hand. She was keeping bees to pollinate her large apple orchard. The angry swarm of bees flew out of the hive and landed on Joan's hand. Her hand was soon very sore and she was sorry she bothered the bees. The angry swarm of bees flew out of the hive and landed on Joan's hand. The repellent she was testing worked, and the bees took off as soon as they smelled it. The bees needed a new hive and Joan complained to her angry husband. He did not have time to move the bees before the winter weather. sting Davcy, B., & LaSasso, C (1985). Relations of cognitive style to assessment components of reading comprehension for deaf adolescents. The Volta Review, 87, Davey, B., LaSasso, C, & MacReady, G. (1983). Comparison of reading comprehension task performance for deaf and hearing readers. Journal of Speech & Hearing Research, 24, Ewoldt, C (1981). A psycholinguistic description of selected deaf children reading in sign language. Reading Research Quarterly, 17, Garrod, S., & Sanford, A. (1977). Interpreting anaphoric relations: The integration of semantic information while reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 16, Haviland, S. E., & dark, H. H. (1974). What's new? Acquiring new information as a process in comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13, Just, M., & Carpenter, P. (1987). The psychology of reading and language comprehension. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Keefe, D. E., & McDaniel, M. A. (1993). The time course and durability of predictive inferences. Journal of Memory and Language, 32, Keenan, J. M., Baillet, S. D, & Brown, P. (1984). The effects of causal cohesion on comprehension and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 23, Keenan, J. M., Potts, G. R., Golding, J. M., & Jennings, T. M. (1990). Which elaborative inferences are drawn during reading? A question of methodologies. In D. A. Balota, G. B. Flores d'arcais, & K. Rayner (Eds.), Comprehension processes in reading (pp ). Hillside, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Marschark, M. (1993). Psychological development of deaf children. New York: Oxford University Press. McKoon, G, & RatclifT, R. (1980). The comprehension processes and memory structures involved in anaphoric reference. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, McKoon, G, & Ratcliff, R. (1986). Inferences about predictable events. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 12(1), Murray, J. D., Klin, C M., & Myers, J. L. (1993). Forward inferences in narrative text. Journal of Memory and Language, 32, Pinhas,J. (1984). Inferential processing in deaf and hearing readers. Paper presented to the American Speech-Language- Hearing Association, San Francisco. Pinhas, J. (1991). Constructive processing in skilled deaf and hearing readers. In D. Martin (Ed.), Advances in cognition, education, and deafness (pp ). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press. Potts, G. R-, Keenan, J. M., & Golding, J. M. (1988). Assessing the occurrence of elaborative inferences: Lexical decision versus naming. Journal of Memory and Language, 27, Quigley, S. P., and Paul, P. V. (1994). Language and deafness. Second Edition. San Diego, CA: Singular Publishing Group, Inc. Sarachan-Deily, A. B. (1985). Written narratives of deaf and hearing students: Story recall and inferences. Journal of Speech (S Hearing Research, 28, Singer, M., & Ferreira, F (1983). Inferring consequences in story comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 22, Trybus, R., & Karchmer, M. (1977). School achievement scores of hearing impaired children: National data on achievement status tnd growth patterns. American Annals of the Deaf, 122, Vonk, W., & Noordman, L. (1990). On the control of inferences in text understanding. In D. A. Balota, G. B. Flores d'arcais, & K. Rayner (Eds.), Comprehension processes in reading (pp ). Hillside, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.