許多研究指出,聽覺正常者在閱讀時會將視覺的字形刺激轉錄(recode)成聲韻形式的內在表徵,而中文的字形與字音之間沒有如拼音文字般的對應關係,從理論及某些臨床的觀察來看,有些學者認為中文的閱讀和辨識應該可以不需經由語音轉錄,直接可由聽覺的「字形」觸接(access)到文字的意義,國內的聽覺障礙者由於缺乏足夠的語音聽覺經驗及所使用文字的異殊性,英文字(詞)的辨識及記憶是否亦存在某種的時錄歷程?這是本研究的主要目的。實驗一及實驗二採用「字彙判斷作業」的實驗方法,測量國內60名學習語言前失聰、大專程度的全聾成人在各種實驗及對照「字組」或「詞組」中反應時間的差異,並藉所得結果推論受試者在中文字或詞辨識歷程中的轉錄現象,實驗一探討所有受試在辨識「字」時的轉錄歷程,材料的設計操弄了字形、字音及手語手形等變項;實驗二操弄手語打法的複雜程度,探討手語組聾人「雙字詞」的辨識歷程是否有轉錄現象。兩個實驗的結果顯示,手語組和口語組聾人,在字彙觸接的歷程中均無聽人的聲韻轉錄現象。實驗三以四種不同的記憶材料測量聾人語文短期保留時的聲韻轉錄情形,結果發現口語組聾人有明顯聲韻轉錄現象,唯聲韻轉錄之指標與閱讀理解之相關未達顯著水準。本研究未發現手語組聾人短期保留歷程中的轉錄情形。研究結果在教育及認知心理學上的意義與啟示,將在本文中做進一步的討論。
Previous studies have indicated that hearing subjects used to recode visually presented words into phonological codes in lexical decision and short term retention tasks. The purpose of this study was to examine whether hearing-impaired individuals in Taiwan have similar cognitive process in above tasks using Chinese characters/words as stimuli.Sixty prelingually and profoundly hearing-impaired college-level adults participated in this study. Thirty of them, educated in manual programs, were signers of Taiwanese sign language and were unable to speak orally. Another thirty were educated in oral programs. Oral speaking was the way they communicate with others. Lexical decision tasks were used in experiment I and II, whereas a serial recall task in experiment III. All 3 experiments were administered with a portable PC. In Experiment I and II, participants were asked to judge as soon as possible whether the characters presented were legitimate Chinese words. Researchers collected the decisions and reaction time Experiment III presented characters in an once-a-second interval. Participants had to recall and write down the characters in the original order.The main findings of this study were: (1) No evidence supported that oral and sign participants has any form of recoding strategy in lexical decision tasks. (2) Oral participants appeared to use phonological code in short-term retention of Chinese characters. However, sign participants did not show evidence of any form of recoding strategy in the short-term retention tasks. (3) Unlike those found in studies of alphabetical written language, the indice of phonological recoding in both oral and sign groups did not correlate with reading comprehension. Possible explanations and implications for future studies were discussed.