Analyzing the influence of deafness on serial position function for letters
(2026) Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education — Vol. 1, p. enag050 (2026)
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- Previous research has shown that letter and digit identification typically follows a W-shaped serial position function, whereas symbol identification exhibits an inverted U-shaped pattern. Given that reading outcomes vary widely among deaf populations, the present study investigated whether deaf adults display serial position functions similar to hearing adults. Using the Target-in-String Identification paradigm, we compared letter, digit, and symbol recognition across five target positions in matched groups of deaf and hearing participants. Both groups demonstrated a pronounced first-letter advantage, consistent with specialized position-tuned letter detectors. However, only the hearing group showed the canonical W-shaped function for letters. Deaf participants exhibited a more linear and quadratic profile, with reduced accuracy at central positions, which may be consistent with a potentially greater influence of visual crowding, even within foveal vision. No reliable position effects emerged for symbols, and both groups displayed similar linear position effects for digits. These findings indicate that while initial-letter prioritization is preserved in deaf readers, spatial tuning for other positions may be influenced, partially supporting the MRF theory and underscoring the need for models that account for variability in orthographic processing across populations. Public significance statements Reading begins with the ability to recognize individual letters, even when they appear in crowded strings. For people who are deaf, this skill may develop differently because they rely more heavily on vision than on sound. In our study, we asked deaf and hearing adults to identify letters, digits, and symbols presented in random strings. We found that deaf readers showed a particularly strong advantage for recognizing the first letter in a string, but more difficulty identifying letters in the middle, where crowding from neighboring characters is strongest. This pattern invites a closer look at existing scientific ideas suggesting that deaf readers may process visual information more broadly due to their greater reliance on vision, ideas that, while supported by some evidence, have largely been studied in peripheral vision or during whole-word recognition tasks rather than in tasks requiring identification of individual letters within crowded strings. Our findings suggest that any such advantage may not extend uniformly across all letter positions, and that efficiency may instead be concentrated at the initial position of a string. This pattern challenges existing scientific ideas that assume deaf readers process all letters more efficiently because of their broader visual attention. By showing that efficiency is uneven across positions, our findings suggest that educational and technological approaches to reading support should consider ways of reducing visual crowding, which could make text easier for deaf readers to process.
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Kamble, V., Leleux, J., Pirlot, M., & Crollen, V. (2026). Analyzing the influence of deafness on serial position function for letters. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 1, enag050. https://doi.org/10.1093/jdsade/enag050 (Original work published 2026)