A Gamified Intervention Programme for the Supervision of Reading Comprehension in Deaf Students

Deaf and Hearing-Impaired (DHH) readers often find it hard to understand what they read. Among others, differences in the ability to monitor comprehension could be one of the high-level processes producing the reading gap between DHH and hearing readers. This study aims to improve reading comprehension in DHH students with an intervention based on an online videogame focused on monitoring and self-regulation in reading comprehension. The study sample consisted of four Spanish DHH students in Year 6 of Primary Education from a special school for DHH students, with a mean age of 11.75 years and heterogeneous hearing characteristics. A randomised multiple-baseline experimental design was used. Baseline sessions included only reading-related play activities, while the intervention sessions focused on training monitoring and self-regulation of reading comprehension using a video game. Each session of the game included components of an intervention successfully implemented in a typical population: questions based on the title, reading, reflection on question responses, detection of comprehension difficulties, and proposition of strategies. One signer participant with very poor reading, but prior knowledge of texts, and comparatively good nonverbal intelligence benefited from the intervention. The study suggests interventions based on self-regulation could be used even with DHH children with poor reading skills but might require a number of supporting skills to be effective.