COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 15, 39-65 (1983) Silent Reading: Insights from Second-Generation Deaf Readers REBECCA TREIMAN Indiana Universiry AND KATHRYN HIRSH-PASEK CMDNJ-Rutgers Medical School Previous studies indicate that hearing readers sometimes convert printed text into a phonological form during silent reading. The experiments reported here investigated whether second-generation congenitally deaf readers use any analo- gous recoding strategy. Fourteen congenitally and profoundly deaf adults who were native signers of American Sign Language (ASL) served as subjects. Four- teen hearing people of comparable reading levels were control subjects. These subjects participated in four experiments that tested for the possibilities of (a) recoding into articulation, (b) recoding into fingerspelling, (c) recoding into ASL, or(d) no recoding at all. The experiments employed paradigms analogous to those previously used to test for phonological recoding in hearing populations. Inter- views with the deaf subjects provided supplementary information about their reading strategies. The results suggest that these deaf subjects as a group do not recode into articulation or fingerspelling, but do recode into sign. An alphabetic writing system maps onto the spoken language at the level of sound. In English, one can derive at least a rough approximation of a word’s phonological form from its printed form. Hearing people can and often do take advantage of this spelling-to-sound correspondence, both in identifying printed words and in storing words in memory. For congenitally deaf people, however, this spelling-sound correspondence is nonexistent. How do deaf readers cope with an alphabetic writing system? We gratefully acknowledge the help of Ernest Singerman, our research assistant, Susan Leviton, our consultant, and Linda Walter, who acted as liaison with the hearing subjects. Most of all, we acknowledge the cooperation of the subjects. Dr. Jonathan Baron and Dr. Lila Gleitman were generous with advice throughout this project. Robert Conrad, Jennifer Freyd, and Lisa Quinn gave valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The com- ments of the editor and reviewers were also very helpful. This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH 32845-01. Preparation of the manuscript was supported, in part, by NSF Grant BNS 81-09892 to R. T. and by Grant HD-12278-03 to the College of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Portions of this research were reported at the Boston University Conference on Language Development, September 15, 1979. Order of authorship is arbitrary. Reprint requests should be sent to R. Treiman, Psychology Dept., Indiana University, Bloomington IN 47405. 39 OOlO-0285/83/010039-27$07.50/O Copyright 0 1Y83 by Academx Press. Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.