Spelling of Deaf Children Who Use Cochlear Implants

The spellings of 39 profoundly deaf users of cochlear implants, aged 6 to 12 years, were compared with those of 39 hearing peers. When controlled for age and reading ability, the error rates of the 2 groups were not significantly different. Both groups evinced phonological spelling strategies, performing better on words with more typical sound–spelling correspondences and often making misspellings that were phonologically plausible. However, the magnitude of these phonological effects was smaller for the deaf children than for hearing children of comparable reading and spelling ability. Deaf children with cochlear implants made the same low proportion of transposition errors as hearing children. The findings indicate that deaf children do not rely primarily on visual memorization strategies, as suggested by previous studies. However, deaf children with cochlear implants use phonological spelling strategies to a lesser degree than hearing peers.