The Effects of Context on Deaf Students' Comprehension of Difficult Sentences

Fifty severely to profoundly deaf students were given a forced-choice picture selection test to investigate the effects of context on their comprehension of difficult sentences. For half the items, students matched pictures to isolated active, passive, or relative-clause sentences; for the other half, students performed the same task, given similar sentences embedded in a context-providing paragraph. Analysis showed a significant facilitative effect of context for relative-clause sentences across reading levels. The implications of these results for future practice are discussed.