Enhancement of Spatial Cognition in Deaf Children

Bellugi, Ursula; O’Grady, Lucinda; Lillo‐Martin, Diane; Hynes, M. O’Grady; Hoek, Karen Van; Corina, David P.

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-74859-2_22

Cited by 77 publications

(48 citation statements)

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“…The information processing of native signers has been found to have a strong visual orientation from an early age (Fischgrung, 1990;Morariu & Brunig, 1984). Deaf subjects perform better than their hearing counterparts on tests of visual memory (Bellugi, O'Grady, Lillo-Martin, O'Grady Hynes, Van Hoek, & Corina, 1990;Emmorey, Kosslyn, & Bellugi, 1993).…”

Section: Memory Of the Deafmentioning

confidence: 88%

Memory span for Arabic numerals and digit words in Japanese kanji in deaf signers

Flaherty

Moran

2001

Jpn Psychol Res

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According to the theory of working memory, the "phonological loop" is a slave system that stores a limited number of sounds for a short period of time. The question of how this system works for deaf people reading a logographic script, kanji, was investigated. We measured the memory span of a sample of Japanese hearing and deaf participants. Hearing subjects were tested in Japanese and deaf subjects in sign language. Memory span was assessed in control and articulatory suppression conditions. In the control condition, subjects were required to recall various item sequences as quickly and accurately as possible. In the articulatory suppression condition, the hearing subjects articulated the phrase no-no, and the deaf subjects expressed a pseudosign, while viewing the stimuli. Results showed that the memory span of the deaf for Japanese kanji was similar to that of their hearing peers. This finding conflicts with previous research which suggested that for users of English, the deaf display consistently shorter memory spans than do their hearing counterparts. In addition, we discovered that in contrast to their hearing colleagues, the deaf Japanese subjects were relatively immune to expected articulatory suppression effects. This finding raises the possibility that working memory coding processes are not universal.

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Section: Memory Of the Deafmentioning

confidence: 88%

Memory span for Arabic numerals and digit words in Japanese kanji in deaf signers

Flaherty

Moran

2001

Jpn Psychol Res

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“…Specifically, certain facial expressions are linguistic and play a significant role in the syntax and morphology of ASL, and signers must be able to discriminate rapidly among many distinct expressions during language comprehension (see [18] for a review). Furthermore, McCullough and Emmorey [34] found that deaf and hearing signers exhibited an enhanced ability to discriminate among similar faces and to recognize subtle changes in specific facial features, compared to hearing non-signers (see also [3,4]); however, ASL signers and hearing non-signers did not differ in their ability to recognize faces they had seen before or in gestalt face processing abilities. This pattern of results was attributed to the fact that to identify and categorize ASL facial expressions, signers need not recognize the person signing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural systems underlying lexical retrieval for sign language

et al. 2003

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Positron emission tomography was used to investigate whether signed languages exhibit the same neural organization for lexical retrieval within classical and non-classical language areas as has been described for spoken English. Ten deaf native American sign language (ASL) signers were shown pictures of unique entities (famous persons) and non-unique entities (animals) and were asked to name each stimulus with an overt signed response. Proper name signed responses to famous people were fingerspelled, and common noun responses to animals were both fingerspelled and signed with native ASL signs. In general, retrieving ASL signs activated neural sites similar to those activated by hearing subjects retrieving English words. Naming famous persons activated the left temporal pole (TP), whereas naming animals (whether fingerspelled or signed) activated left inferotemporal (IT) cortex. The retrieval of fingerspelled and native signs generally engaged the same cortical regions, but fingerspelled signs in addition activated a premotor region, perhaps due to the increased motor planning and sequencing demanded by fingerspelling. Native signs activated portions of the left supramarginal gyrus (SMG), an area previously implicated in the retrieval of phonological features of ASL signs. Overall, the findings indicate that similar neuroanatomical areas are involved in lexical retrieval for both signs and words.

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“…Natural experiments created by deaf people born to hearing parents (90% of the deaf population) have lead to extensive research regarding the effect of delayed language acquisition (Emmorey, 1993;Mayberry, 1991Mayberry, , 1992Mayberry, , 1995Neville et al, 1997;Singleton and Newport, 2004); the relationship between language and spatial cognition (Emmorey, 1993;Emmorey, 2002;Mayberry, 1992;Neville, 1995;Poizner et al, 1987); the attainment of cognitive and linguistic milestones (Bellugi et al, 1990;Chamberlain et al, 2000;Church and Goldin-Meadow, 1986;Goldin-Meadow et al, 1996;Goldin-Meadow and Mylander, 1991;Newport and Meier, 1985); the neural organization of American Sign Language (ASL) (Bellugi et al, 1989;Emmorey et al, 2002;Emmorey et al, 1998;Neville, 1988;Neville, 1995;Neville et al, 1998); and the relationship between language and affect (Corina, 1989;Corina et al, 1999;Reilly et al, 1990a;Reilly et al, 1990b). There is evidence that deaf children who have been exposed to a complete language model from birth, as is the case with deaf children born to deaf parents (i.e., native signers or "early language learners"), perform the same as hearing children of hearing parents on many cognitive measures (Marschark, 1993;Marschark and Clark, 1993;Mayberry, 1992).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Deaf people have displayed superior mental rotation abilities (McKee, 1987;Talbot and Haude, 1993), greater accuracy in remembering object orientation (Emmorey et al, 1998), and superior copying abilities compared to hearing subjects who do not sign (Emmorey, 1993;Emmorey et al, 1993). Taken together, cognitive data from nonclinical samples of deaf people point to the idea that native signers-whether deaf or hearing-display enhanced visual-spatial processing abilities compared to hearing people who do not know sign language or who learn it later in childhood (Bellugi et al, 1990;Bettger et al, 1997;McCullough and Emmorey, 1997). Native signers include deaf and hearing persons whose first language is ASL.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%