Oral and Written Discourse Skills in Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children : The Role of Reading and Verbal Working Memory

This study examined the discourse skills of deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children by comparing
their oral and written narratives produced for the wordless picture book, Frog, Where Are You?
(Mayer, 1969), with those of school-age-matched hearing peers. The written stories produced
by 42 Italian 7- to 15-year-old children with moderate to profound hearing loss were compared
with those of 48 school-age-matched hearing controls (age range = 7–13 years). The amount of
linguistic information produced, measured as the number of words and clauses produced, the
ability to generate a narrative structure, and coherence relations between the clauses of the story
were investigated. The contribution of age, reading skills, and verbal working memory (measured
as forward and backward digit span scores) were investigated relative to DHH children’s ability
to produce connected discourse in oral and written modalities. Deaf and hard of hearing children
showed poorer discourse skills in oral andwritten narration; however, their disadvantage appeared
to be greater in the written modality. Reading comprehension skills accounted for significant
variance in DHH children’s ability to generate narrative discourse. Yet, forward digit span scores,
representing verbal rehearsal skills, contributed uniquely to the coherence of their narratives once
age and reading comprehension were controlled. The contribution was greater in the written
modality, suggesting that DHH children’s greater disadvantage in this modality was related to the
greater cognitive costs of the writing task.