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Preexisting semantic representation improves working memory performance in the visuospatial domain.

Mary Rudner1, Eleni Orfanidou2,3, Velia Cardin4,2

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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Preexisting semantic memory enhances visual working memory (WM) for sign language in deaf individuals, especially under high cognitive load. Hearing signers also benefit from familiar sign language, suggesting flexible WM resource allocation.

Keywords:
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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Linguistics

Background:

  • Working memory (WM) benefits from pre-existing long-term memory representations.
  • The generalization of this effect to the visuospatial domain and sign language is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if pre-existing semantic representations enhance visuospatial working memory for sign language.
  • To compare working memory performance across deaf signers, hearing signers, and hearing nonsigners using various visual stimuli.

Main Methods:

  • Administered a visual n-back task using British Sign Language (BSL), Swedish Sign Language (SSL), nonsigns, and nonlinguistic manual actions.
  • Tested deaf signers, hearing signers, and hearing nonsigners.

Main Results:

  • Hearing signers showed better performance with familiar BSL than unfamiliar SSL, indicating semantic facilitation.
  • Deaf signers performed better with BSL than SSL, particularly at high WM loads.
  • Deaf signers outperformed hearing nonsigners on sign-based materials, but not nonlinguistic actions.

Conclusions:

  • Pre-existing semantic representations enhance visuospatial WM for sign language, especially in deaf signers under high load.
  • Deaf signers exhibit expertise in processing visual sign-based information.
  • Findings support flexible-resource models of working memory.