Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students' Configurational and Phonological Processing in Chinese One- and Two-Character Word Recognition.

To examine deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students' configurational and phonological processing in Chinese one- and two-character word recognition, two experiments were conducted in a primed semantic categorization task. Configurational priming was observed in DHH participants' reaction times (RTs) at the SOA (stimulus onset asynchrony) of 47 ms and in their probability of making erroneous responses at SOAs of 47 and 187 ms in Experiment 1. Phonological priming was revealed in hearing and DHH participants' probability of making erroneous responses in Experiment 2. Hearing participants' RTs indicated facilitation and inhibition at the SOAs of 47 and 187 ms, respectively; DHH participants' RTs showed priming at the SOA of 187 ms. It is concluded that DHH college students are more likely to use the configurational information but less likely to use the phonological information than hearing college students in one- and two-character word recognition.