Constructing Meaning from Narrative Text: Cognitive Processes of Deaf Children

The purpose of this study was to examine the reading comprehension processes of deaf children during the reading of narrative text by exploring the predictions they made when the material confirmed and did not confirm their expectations. The subjects were 48 deaf children in upper elementary and junior high school. Each read a well-formed and non-well-formed story, half of which began with a thematic organizer. They were asked to make predictions at three points in each story. It was found that (1) when the children made elaborated predictions, they tended to make them with both stories, (2) elaborated predictions were related to reports of mental imagery, and (3) more elaborations were reported near the beginning and end of non-well-formed stories and stories with no organizers.