The purpose of this study was to examine experimentally the developmental changes and characteristics on print awareness of hearing-impaired young children in China through comparison with hearing young children of the same age. It was conducted a character consciousness measurement task on judging whether the presented stimulus was a character or not for 67 hearing-impaired young children and 45 hearing young children aged 3 to 5 years in China. As a result, hearing young children showed an increase in the score of the print awareness task among all ages, and that print awareness improved with development. Hearing-impaired young children were suggested to have significantly improved print awareness between the ages of 4 and 5 due to the increased score of the print awareness task between the ages of 3 and 5 and between the ages of 4 and 5. From this result, it was clarified that even hearing-impaired young children at the age of three years before receiving formal literacy education can recognize characters to some extent, and that the print awareness develops up to the age of five. From this study, it is suggested that hearing-impaired young children have a slight delay in the development of print awareness compared to hearing young children of the same age. There is a significant difference from hearing young children as the age increased, indicating that print awareness of hearing-impaired young children develops more slowly than hearing young children.
Development of print awareness, hearing-impaired children