Reading without phonology: ERP evidence from skilled deaf readers of Spanish.

Reading typically involves phonological mediation, especially for transparent orthographies with a regular letter to sound correspondence. In this study we ask whether phonological coding is a necessary part of the reading process by examining prelingually deaf individuals who are skilled readers of Spanish. We conducted two EEG experiments exploiting the pseudohomophone effect, in which nonwords that sound like words elicit phonological encoding during reading.

Phonological and orthographic coding in deaf skilled readers.

Written language is very important in daily life. However, most deaf people do not achieve good reading levels compared to their hearing peers. Previous research has mainly focused on their difficulties when reading in a language with an opaque orthography such as English.