Reading, Clumsiness, and the Deaf Child

The experiments reported here were undertaken to investigate the possibility that clumsiness, a possible secondary handicap of deafness, may cause an unsuspected retardation in reading ability in the deaf, even those without overt vestibular or neural damage.

The tests of clumsiness that were used failed to differentiate between deaf and hearing children, and while the usual relationship between reading and clumsiness was confirmed in the hearing population, no such relationship was found for the deaf.

Earlier research suggesting that the deaf may be clumsy was criticised, and the failure to link the degree of clumsiness to reading ability was interpreted in terms of research showing that reading age in the deaf means something quite different from reading age in the hearing.