Sign-language exposure impacts infants as young as 5 months old

Date:
April 8, 2021
Source:
Rochester Institute of Technology
Summary:
While it isn't surprising that infants and children love to look
at people's movements and faces, recent research studies exactly
where they look when they see someone using sign language. The
research uses eye- tracking technology that offers a non-invasive
and powerful tool to study cognition and language learning in
pre-verbal infants.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== While it isn't surprising that infants and children love to look at
people's movements and faces, recent research from Rochester Institute of Technology's National Technical Institute for the Deaf studies exactly
where they look when they see someone using sign language. The research
uses eye-tracking technology that offers a non-invasive and powerful
tool to study cognition and language learning in pre-verbal infants.


==========================================================================
NTID researcher and Assistant Professor Rain Bosworth and alumnus Adam
Stone studied early-language knowledge in young infants and children by recording their gaze patterns as they watched a signer. The goal was
to learn, just from gaze patterns alone, whether the child was from a
family that used spoken language or signed language at home.

They tested two groups of hearing infants and children that differ in
their home language. One "control" group had hearing parents who spoke
English and never used sign language or baby signs. The other group had
deaf parents who only used American Sign Language at home. Both sets of children had normal hearing in this study. The control group saw sign
language for the first time in the lab, while the native signing group
was familiar with sign language.

The study, published in Developmental Science, showed that the non-signing infants and children looked at areas on the signer called "signing space,"
in front of the torso. The hands predominantly fall in this area about
80 percent of the time when signing. However, the signing infants and
children looked primarily at the face, barely looking at the hands.

According to the findings, the expert sign-watching behavior is already
present by about 5 months of age.

"This is the earliest evidence, that we know of, for effects of
sign-language exposure," said Bosworth. "At first, it does seem counter-intuitive that the non-signers are looking at the hands and
signers are not. We think signers keep their gaze on the face because they
are relying on highly developed and efficient peripheral vision. Infants
who are not familiar with sign language look at the hands in signing
space perhaps because that is what is perceptually salient to them."
Another possible reason why signing babies keep their gaze on the face
could be because they already understand that the face is very important
for social interactions, added Bosworth.

"We think the reason perceptual gaze control matures so rapidly is
because it supports later language learning, which is more gradual,"
Bosworth said. "In other words, you have to be able to know where to look before you learn the language signal." Bosworth says more research is
needed to understand the gaze behaviors of deaf babies who are or are
not exposed to sign language.

The research was supported by grants awarded to Bosworth from the National Science Foundation and the National Eye Institute.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
Rochester_Institute_of_Technology. Original written by Vienna
McGrain. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Rain G. Bosworth, Adam Stone. Rapid development of perceptual gaze
control in hearing native signing Infants and
children. Developmental Science, 2021; DOI: 10.1111/desc.13086 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210408152244.htm

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