Rapid development of perceptual gaze control in hearing native signing Infants and children

Bosworth, Rain G.; Stone, Adam

doi:10.1111/desc.13086

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…Infants learning ASL have enhanced gaze control (Bosworth & Stone, 2021), and deaf infants learning ASL have enhanced abilities to follow the gaze of their interlocutors relative to hearing infants (Brooks et al, 2020). By the age of two, deaf children acquiring ASL shift gaze meaningfully and frequently when interacting with adult interlocutors to connect language and visual information (Lieberman et al, 2014).…”

Section: Allocation Of Attention To Language and Referential Cuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexible fast‐mapping: Deaf children dynamically allocate visual attention to learn novel words in American Sign Language

Lieberman

Fitch

Borovsky

2021

Developmental Science

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Word learning in young children requires coordinated attention between language input and the referent object. Current accounts of word learning are based on spoken language, where the association between language and objects occurs through simultaneous and multimodal perception. In contrast, deaf children acquiring American Sign Language (ASL) perceive both linguistic and non‐linguistic information through the visual mode. In order to coordinate attention to language input and its referents, deaf children must allocate visual attention optimally between objects and signs. We conducted two eye‐tracking experiments to investigate how young deaf children allocate attention and process referential cues in order to fast‐map novel signs to novel objects. Participants were deaf children learning ASL between the ages of 17 and 71 months. In Experiment 1, participants (n = 30) were presented with a novel object and a novel sign, along with a referential cue that occurred either before or after the sign label. In Experiment 2, a new group of participants (n = 32) were presented with two novel objects and a novel sign, so that the referential cue was critical for identifying the target object. Across both experiments, participants showed evidence for fast‐mapping the signs regardless of the timing of the referential cue. Individual differences in children's allocation of attention during exposure were correlated with their ability to fast‐map the novel signs at test. This study provides first evidence for fast‐mapping in sign language, and contributes to theoretical accounts of how word learning develops when all input occurs in the visual modality.

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Section: Allocation Of Attention To Language and Referential Cuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexible fast‐mapping: Deaf children dynamically allocate visual attention to learn novel words in American Sign Language

Lieberman

Fitch

Borovsky

2021

Developmental Science

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“…Together, these findings suggest that young infants are sensitive to visual language, but without sign language exposure, the visual-manual modality is no longer a linguistic domain for them, as their attention, interest, and sensitivity hone to their native spoken language. Although we do not know what would happen with native signing 12-month-olds who hone in preference to their native sign language, recent studies suggest that native signing infants have mature visual attention patterns for social and linguistic signals in place by one year of age (Brooks et al, 2020;Bosworth and Stone, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Visual attention for linguistic and non-linguistic body actions in non-signing and native signing children

2022

Self Cite

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Evidence from adult studies of deaf signers supports the dissociation between neural systems involved in processing visual linguistic and non-linguistic body actions. The question of how and when this specialization arises is poorly understood. Visual attention to these forms is likely to change with age and be affected by prior language experience. The present study used eye-tracking methodology with infants and children as they freely viewed alternating video sequences of lexical American sign language (ASL) signs and non-linguistic body actions (self-directed grooming action and object-directed pantomime). In Experiment 1, we quantified fixation patterns using an area of interest (AOI) approach and calculated face preference index (FPI) values to assess the developmental differences between 6 and 11-month-old hearing infants. Both groups were from monolingual English-speaking homes with no prior exposure to sign language. Six-month-olds attended the signer’s face for grooming; but for mimes and signs, they were drawn to attend to the “articulatory space” where the hands and arms primarily fall. Eleven-month-olds, on the other hand, showed a similar attention to the face for all body action types. We interpret this to reflect an early visual language sensitivity that diminishes with age, just before the child’s first birthday. In Experiment 2, we contrasted 18 hearing monolingual English-speaking children (mean age of 4.8 years) vs. 13 hearing children of deaf adults (CODAs; mean age of 5.7 years) whose primary language at home was ASL. Native signing children had a significantly greater face attentional bias than non-signing children for ASL signs, but not for grooming and mimes. The differences in the visual attention patterns that are contingent on age (in infants) and language experience (in children) may be related to both linguistic specialization over time and the emerging awareness of communicative gestural acts.

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“…However, it is also important to ask these questions with sign-exposed infants, as well as infants exposed to both sign and spoken language (bi-modal bilinguals). ASL-exposed infants have been shown to demonstrate enhanced gaze control and gaze following as a result of their early visual language experience ( Brooks et al, 2020 ; Bosworth and Stone, 2021 ). Comparing their attentional patterns to those of sign-native infants will further elucidate the ways in which infants adjust their attentional processes on the basis of their exposure.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

I See What You Are Saying: Hearing Infants’ Visual Attention and Social Engagement in Response to Spoken and Sign Language

2022

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Infants are endowed with a proclivity to acquire language, whether it is presented in the auditory or visual modality. Moreover, in the first months of life, listening to language supports fundamental cognitive capacities, including infants’ facility to form object categories (e.g., dogs and bottles). Recently, we have found that for English-acquiring infants as young as 4 months of age, this precocious interface between language and cognition is sufficiently broad to include not only their native spoken language (English), but also sign language (American Sign Language, ASL). In the current study, we take this work one step further, asking how “sign-naïve” infants—hearing infants with no prior exposure to sign language—deploy their attentional and social strategies in the context of episodes involving either spoken or sign language. We adopted a now-standard categorization task, presenting 4- to 6-month-old infants with a series of exemplars from a single category (e.g., dinosaurs). Each exemplar was introduced by a woman who appeared on the screen together with the object. What varied across conditions was whether this woman introduced the exemplar by speaking (English) or signing (ASL). We coded infants’ visual attentional strategies and their spontaneous vocalizations during this task. Infants’ division of attention and visual switches between the woman and exemplar varied as a function of language modality. In contrast, infants’ spontaneous vocalizations revealed similar patterns across languages. These results, which advance our understanding of how infants allocate attentional resources and engage with communicative partners across distinct modalities, have implications for specifying our theories of language acquisition.

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Rapid development of perceptual gaze control in hearing native signing Infants and children

Cited by 12 publications

References 77 publications

Flexible fast‐mapping: Deaf children dynamically allocate visual attention to learn novel words in American Sign Language

Flexible fast‐mapping: Deaf children dynamically allocate visual attention to learn novel words in American Sign Language

Visual attention for linguistic and non-linguistic body actions in non-signing and native signing children

I See What You Are Saying: Hearing Infants’ Visual Attention and Social Engagement in Response to Spoken and Sign Language

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