Assessing the Effects of Sign Language Experience Versus Deafness on the Leftward Reading Span

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Linguistics
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Deafness and sign language experience influence visual attention distribution.
• Reading span size, the visual field for reading, is typically asymmetrical.
• Deaf signers exhibit a larger leftward reading span compared to hearing readers.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if early deafness or sign language experience causes the enhanced leftward reading span in deaf signers.
• To investigate the role of visual attention in reading span size.
• To compare reading efficiency across hearing nonsigners, hearing signers, and deaf signers.

Main Methods:

• Gaze-contingent moving-window paradigm used to measure leftward reading span.
• Participants included hearing nonsigners, hearing early signers, and deaf early signers with matched reading abilities.
• Reading efficiency metrics (rate, skipped words, regressions) were recorded.

Main Results:

• Deaf and hearing signers demonstrated an identical, larger leftward reading span (10 characters) compared to hearing nonsigners (4 characters).
• Sign language experience is a significant factor in the enlarged leftward reading span.
• Deaf signers exhibited superior reading efficiency (faster rate, more skipped words, fewer regressions) than both hearing groups.

Conclusions:

• Sign language experience contributes to a larger leftward reading span.
• The enhanced reading efficiency in deaf signers is not solely attributable to their larger leftward span.
• Visual attention and reading processing are significantly modulated by sign language acquisition and deafness.