Visual learning strategies to promote literacy skills in prelingually deaf readers

Aim of this study is to determine the efficacy of visual strategies for learning and improving literacy skills in prelingually deaf readers. Intervention, based on the premise that deaf learners are visual learners and thus require visual pedagogical practices, was conducted on literacy skills of a sample of 24 prelingually deaf readers with profound hearing loss (M 9.88, SD = .86). Results suggest participants improved their performance in letter identification, lexical recognition, syntactical skills and semantic skills. The intervention program based on practices focused on deaf accelerates development of literacy skills. Study provides evidence of the need of cultural beliefs and experience of being a deaf person in order to propose effective pedagogical practices, thus reinforcing research in Deaf Epistemology.