The objective of this study was to bring about a better understanding of the abilities of prelingually deafened individuals to process word and nonword visual information. Students with prelingual deafness (n = 18, mean grade = 5.1) and a task-matched hearing control group (n = 28, mean grade = 4.9) judged the identicalness of physically (perceptually) or conventionally identical words or drawings to learn about differences in their processing strategies as the phonological information contained in these stimuli was manipulated. Findings suggested that the information-processing skills of both groups of participants were similar regardless of stimulus material (i.e., words or drawings) and whether such processing required the referencing of conceptual knowledge. Evidence further indicated that both groups relied on similar strategies for processing the stimuli but that neither relied on a phonology-based strategy.KEY WORDS: deafness, reading, word processing, phonology, reading strategy