The Study Of Deaf Readers' Bridging Inference During Text Reading

Inference is a key factor during text reading. It decides whther a reader can build coherence and integrate mental models. In recent years, reserchers have paid attention to the individual difference of inferences during text reading of hearing people, but little attention was paid to the deaf people. The present research finds its way right here to study the bridging inference of deaf readers with skilled and less skilled reading ability during text reading. In order to find the influential factors of inference, working memory capacity of deaf readers was also studied.In part one, through reviewing the theories and progress of reading processing and the researches of reading ability of deaf readers, the research framework was founded.In part two, three experiments were conducted to investigate the bridging inference of skilled and less skilled deaf readers in text comprehension and its cognitive influential factor.In experiment 1, eye movement measure, probe technique and questions answering were used to study the bridging inference of deaf students on local coherent level. The results showed only skilled deaf readers can construct the bridging inference. In experiment 2, same methods were used to study the bridging inference of deaf readers on global conerent level. Results showed that both skilled and less skilled deaf readers can not construct the bridging inference on global coherent level. In experiment 3, deaf readers' reading span was evaluated. Results showed that skilled deaf readers' working memory spans were comparable to those of hearing peers and less skilled deaf readers possessed significantly poorer working memory spans than hearing peers. All deaf readers showed significantly low processing efficiency.The results of total three experiments demonstrated that deaf readers tried to construct bridging inference for both local and global coherence during text reading, but only skilled deaf readers had the ability to fulfill the bridging inference task on local level. All deaf readers used poor reading strategy. Working memory capacity was critical to deaf readers' reading comprehension.