Comparison of Reading Comprehension Task Performance for Deaf and Hearing Readers
The internal consistency, variability, and performance level of 50 deaf and 50 hearing subjects (with comparable SAT reading comprehension scores) were compared on two production (cloze and free-response) tasks and two recognition (multiple-choice and modified-cloze) tasks. Multiple-choice and free-response tasks were administered under both lookback and no-lookback conditions. Task consistencies and variabilities for deaf and hearing groups did not differ appreciably. Groups differed, however, with respect to mean level of performance, Deaf subjects' overall task performance level tended to be lower than that of hearing subjects, with the greatest differences noted in lookback and production conditions.