Reading without phonology: ERP evidence from skilled deaf readers of Spanish
Date
2021Author
Costello, Brendan
Caffarra, Sendy
Fariña, Noemi
Duñabeitia, Jon Andoni
Carreiras, Manuel
Metadata
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Costello B, Caffarra S, Fariña N, Duñabeitia JA, Carreiras M. Reading without phonology: ERP evidence from skilled deaf readers of Spanish. Scientific Reports. 2021 Mar;11(1):5202. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-84490-5.
Abstract
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. The first,
a semantic categorization task with masked priming, resulted in modulation of the N250 by
pseudohomophone primes in hearing but not in deaf readers. The second, a lexical decision task,
confirmed the pattern: hearing readers had increased errors and an attenuated N400 response
for pseudohomophones compared to control pseudowords, whereas deaf readers did not treat
pseudohomophones any differently from pseudowords, either behaviourally or in the ERP response.
These results offer converging evidence that skilled deaf readers do not rely on phonological coding
during visual word recognition. Furthermore, the finding demonstrates that reading can take place
in the absence of phonological activation, and we speculate about the alternative mechanisms that
allow these deaf individuals to read competently.