The impact of hearing impairment on the development of literacy and academic skills is substantial. Researchers report that, disregarding the first language of deaf individuals (oral or sign language), their written language is generally poor and largely below their age level. Similarly, the incidence of reading comprehension difficulties among deaf children poses an actual and relevant problem to educational systems around the world. Everyday, educators face deaf readers’ problems in accessing and elaborating information from texts. Hearing loss also places children at risk for difficulties in learning mathematics This sort of difficulties generate wide learning problems, with severe consequences in the deaf people’s social and professional life. Examining specific aspects of the deaf children’s learning and literacy may help in deciding which factors should be the focus of instructional programs and may inform clinical and instructional intervention.
Selected publications
Arfé, B., Spicciarelli, G., Gheller, F., Gómez-Merino, N., Martini, A., Trevisi, P. (in press). The cognitive effects of noise in children with cochlear implants: A proof-of-concept study. Journal of Applied Psycholinguistics.
Gheller, F., Spicciarelli, G., Scimemi, P., & Arfé, B. (2024). The effects of noise on children’s cognitive performance: A systematic review. Environment and Behavior, 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1177/00139165241245823
Arfé, B., Carretti, B., van den Broek, P., Benincasa, P., Genovese, E., & Oakhill, J. (2023). Why Are Causal and Temporal Connectives Difficult to Understand? A Comparison Between Italian Hearing Good and Poor Comprehenders and Deaf Poor Comprehenders. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00229
Natalizi F., Gómez-Merino N., Arfé B., Ferrer A., Gheller F., Fajardo I. (2023). Being a deaf student in a face mask world: Survey data from Italian university students. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 143:104618. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2023.104618. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37913576
Arfé, B., Spicciarelli, G., Gheller, F., Facca, M., Gómez-Merino, N., Trevisi, P., & Martini, A. (2021). The cognitive effects of noise on the memory performance of children with cochlear implants. EURONOISE, 25-27 Oct. 2021, Madeira, Portugal. Conference proceedings.
Fastelli A, Mento G, Marshall CR, Arfé B (2021) Implicit learning of non-verbal regularities by deaf children with cochlear implants: An investigation with a dynamic temporal prediction task. PLOS ONE 16(5): e0251050. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251050
Gomez-Merino, N., Gheller, F., Spicciarelli, G., & Trevisi, P. (2020). Pupillometry as a measure for listening effort in children: a review. Hearing Balance and Communication, 18(3), 152-158. https://doi.org/10.1080/21695717.2020.1807256
Gomez, N., Fajardo, I., Ferrer, A., & Arfé, B. (2020). Time-course of grammatical processing in deaf readers: An eye-movement study. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. http://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enaa005
Gheller, F., Lovo, E., Arsie, A., & Bovo, R. (2020). Classroom acoustics: Listening problems in children. Building Acoustics, 27(1), 47-59, Article 1351010×19886035. https://doi.org/10.1177/1351010×19886035
Ghiselli, S., Gheller, F., Trevisi, P., Favaro, E., Martini, A., & Ermani, M. (2020). Restoration of auditory network after cochlear implant in prelingual deafness: a P300 study using LORETA. Acta Otorhinolaryngologica Italica, 40(1), 64-71. https://doi.org/10.14639/0392-100x-2316
Arfé, B., Fastelli, A. (2020). The influence of explicit and implicit memory processes on the spoken-written language learning of children with CIs. In M. Marschark & H. Knoors (Eds.) The Oxford handbook of deaf studies in learning and cognition. Oxford University Press.
Sullivan, S., Oakhill, J., Arfé, B., & Gomez, N. (2020). Reading comprehension: A comparison of hearing, deaf and hard-of-hearing children. In S. Easterbrooks & H. Dostal (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of literacy studies. Oxford University Press.
Arfé, B., Ghiselli, S., & Montino, S. (2016): The written language of children with cochlear implant. Hearing, Balance and Communication, 14, 103-110. https://doi.org/10.1080/21695717.2016.1197619
Arfé, B. (2015). Oral and written discourse skills in deaf children: the role of reading and verbal working memory. Topics in Language Disorders, 35(2), 180-197. https://doi.org/10.1097/TLD.0000000000000054
Arfé, B., Rossi, C., Sicoli, S. (2015). The contribution of verbal working memory to deaf children’s oral and written production. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 20, 203–214. https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/env005