2-067 - New approaches to understanding human language: Insights from neuroimaging and behavioral studies of visual language learning

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Comparisons between children learning American Sign Language (ASL) and children learning spoken English provide a unique opportunity to test hypotheses about what aspects of development are shaped by the constraints of language form and modality. The research presented in this symposium uses innovative neuroimaging and behavioral approaches to show that early experience learning ASL can influence neural development and facilitate a range of outcomes, including visual attention, language processing skills, and learning to read. The first speaker uses fNIRS technology to collect neuroimaging data from deaf individuals with cochlear implants, showing that age of language acquisition, and not language modality, leads to normal neural development for language processing. The second speaker explores the influence of sign language acquisition on infants’ gaze-following behavior, reporting that deaf and hearing sign-exposed infants were better at following a speaker’s gaze compared to non sign-exposed infants. The third speaker presents a new paradigm for measuring young ASL-learners’ real-time language comprehension and novel sign learning skills, showing age-related changes in children’s language processing efficiency. The final speaker uses an innovative approach, combining fNIRS and eye tracking, to test the hypothesis that early experience decoding ASL fingerspelling facilitates reading acquisition. Taken together, these studies present novel approaches to studying ASL acquisition and as a result provide new insights into how exposure to a visual-gestural language can influence cognitive development more broadly.

Sub Unit

• Language, Communication

Chairs

• Kyle MacDonald, Stanford University

• Anne Fernald, Stanford Univ

Individual Presentations

• Disambiguating the effects of age and modality on the neural systems underlying language - Presenting Author: Clifton Langdon, Gallaudet University

• Gaze following and gaze alternation: A comparison of infants with and without early sign language experience - Presenting Author: Jenny Lee Singleton, Georgia Institute of Technology; Rechele Brooks, University of Washington

• The early development of efficiency in real-time lexical processing by children learning American Sign Language - Presenting Author: Kyle MacDonald, Stanford University; Todd LaMarr, University of California - Davis; Virginia A. Marchman, Stanford University; David Corina, UC Davis; Anne Fernald, Stanford Univ

• Early sign language experience and visual attention in young deaf readers: an eye tracking and fNIRS investigation - Presenting Author: Laura-Ann Petitto, Gallaudet University; Clifton Langdon, Gallaudet University; Adam Stone, Gallaudet University