Sign language ability in young deaf signers predicts comprehension of written sentences in English.

Authors

Kathy N Andrew, Department of Psychology and Brain and Mind Institute, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
Jennifer Hoshooley, Department of Psychology and Brain and Mind Institute, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
Marc F Joanisse, Department of Psychology and Brain and Mind Institute, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, CanadaFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2014

Journal

PLoS One

Volume

9

Issue

2

First Page

89994

Last Page

89994

URL with Digital Object Identifier

10.1371/journal.pone.0089994

Abstract

We investigated the robust correlation between American Sign Language (ASL) and English reading ability in 51 young deaf signers ages 7;3 to 19;0. Signers were divided into 'skilled' and 'less-skilled' signer groups based on their performance on three measures of ASL. We next assessed reading comprehension of four English sentence structures (actives, passives, pronouns, reflexive pronouns) using a sentence-to-picture-matching task. Of interest was the extent to which ASL proficiency provided a foundation for lexical and syntactic processes of English. Skilled signers outperformed less-skilled signers overall. Error analyses further indicated greater single-word recognition difficulties in less-skilled signers marked by a higher rate of errors reflecting an inability to identify the actors and actions described in the sentence. Our findings provide evidence that increased ASL ability supports English sentence comprehension both at the levels of individual words and syntax. This is consistent with the theory that first language learning promotes second language through transference of linguistic elements irrespective of the transparency of mapping of grammatical structures between the two languages.