本研究的目的在瞭解使用台灣手語的聾人於閱讀中文字詞時的音韻運作情形。由於中文字聲旁的表音情形時常是不規則與不一致，透過中文字詞的研究可以有效釐清聾人讀者直叫可受到字形與字音的個別影響。研究中運用屬於音韻外顯作業的同音判斷作業來評估聾人手語者的中文字形字音轉換規則的知識，並使用音韻促發作業來評估聾人手語者內隱的音韻運作。研究方法：實驗一中，參與者必須對同時呈現的兩個中文字作出中文音韻相同與否的判斷，實驗操弄中文音韻相似性(相似、不相似)以及中文字形相似性（相似、不相似），並分析聽人的正確率、敏感度與反應時間，但僅分析聾人手語者的正確率與敏感度;實驗二之一則運用詞彙判斷作業，操弄中文雙字詞中，促發詞與目標詞之間的關係（語意相關，中文音韻相關，完全無關）實驗二之二仍舊使用詞彙判斷作業，但操弄中文雙字詞轉換為台灣手語後，促發詞與目標詞之間的關係（台灣手語音韻相關，完全無關）。結果：實驗一結果顯示聾人手語者的正確率(.66)顯著低於聽人參與者(.87)，尤其是在字形不相以的情境中，聾人的正確率與敏感度顯著較低，再者，在聽人的同音字判斷中，頻率對數可以顯著預測其正確率與反應時間，而發音一致性則僅能預測反應時間，相對的，聾人手語者於同音判斷作業的正確率可以同時由頻率對數與發音一致性，此結果顯示出聾人手語者具有中文字形字音轉換規則的知識。於實驗二之一的促發作業中，聾人手語者僅呈現出語意的觸發效果，但沒有中文音韻的促發效果，這顯示出聾人手語者在有時間限制情境下，口語音韻訊息並非自動地激發。在實驗二之二結果中，台灣手語的音韻促發效果僅在聾人手語者中顯現，進一步顯示出聾人手語者在閱讀中文字詞時，會透過台灣手語的音韻訊息來觸接心理詞彙。結論：本研究發現使用台灣手語的聾人是具有中文字形字音轉換規則的知識，但這樣的知識不夠完整以完成中文同音字的判斷，同時，台灣手語音訊息在閱讀中文詞時可被自動地激發，以達詞彙判斷理解之目的。

This study investigates the phonological processing that Taiwanese deaf signers engage in when recognizing Chinese characters and words. The deaf participants’ orthography-phonology transformation (OPT) abilities were tested using an explicit Chinese homophone judgment task, and their implicit phonological activations were tested using lexical decision tasks. Chinese characters, whose phonetic radicals are not always reliable guides to pronunciation, are a useful tool for dissociating the influence of phonology and orthography. Experiment 1 manipulated sound-based phonological similarity (similar, dissimilar) and orthographical similarity (similar, dissimilar). Accuracy, sensitivity (d����), and reaction times (RTs) were recorded for hearing participants, but only accuracy and sensitivity (d����) recorded for deaf participants, who are fluent signers of Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL). Additionally, the predictive abilities of log word frequency and the consistency values for homophone judgment performance were analyzed. Experiment 2-1 was designed to compare the effects of three primes (semantically related, sound-based phonologically related, and unrelated primes) on the performance of deaf and hearing participants on a lexical decision task. In Experiment 2-2, TSL phonologically related primes were compared with unrelated primes for deaf and hearing subjects. The results of Experiment 1 show that the accuracy of deaf subjects was poor (.66) and was lower than that of hearing subjects (.87). Particularly, the deaf subjects’ accuracy and sensitivity in the orthographically dissimilar condition were significantly lower than in the orthographically similar condition. For hearing subjects, log word frequency significantly predicted their accuracy and RTs, whereas the consistency values predicted only the RTs. For the deaf participants, the accuracy could be efficiently predicted by both log word frequency and consistency values, which reflect knowledge of OPT rules. We suggested that although deaf individuals had acquired knowledge of OPT rules, this knowledge was neither complete nor sufficiently robust to make homophone judgments. In Experiment 2-1, the results show that there was a semantic priming effect but no sound-based phonological priming effect for the deaf participants. The results further reveal that deaf people with a limited hearing ability did not automatically process the sound-based phonological representations under time-constrained conditions. In Experiment 2-2, there was an action-based phonological priming effect for deaf signers but not for hearing subjects, indicating that deaf signers automatically activated related action-based phonology to access the semantic meaning of words when reading Chinese. This study finds that deaf signers acquire OPT rules but that their OPT rules are not sufficiently robust or complete to allow them to make explicit phonological judgments and homophone judgments. Deaf signers automatically activated action-based representations rather than sound-based phonological representations when reading Chinese characters.