Visual-Spatial Perspective-Taking in Spatial Scenes and in American Sign Language. (1st June 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Secora, Kristen; Emmorey, Karen
• Is Part Of: Journal of deaf studies and deaf education. Volume 25:Number 4(2020)
• Page Start: 447
• Page End: 456
• Publication Date: 2020-06-01
• Subjects: Deafness -- Periodicals; Deaf -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; 371.912
• DOI: 10.1093/deafed/enaa006
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1081-4159

Abstract

Abstract: As spatial languages, sign languages rely on spatial cognitive processes that are not involved for spoken languages. Interlocutors have different visual perspectives of the signer's hands requiring a mental transformation for successful communication about spatial scenes. It is unknown whether visual-spatial perspective-taking (VSPT) or mental rotation (MR) abilities support signers' comprehension of perspective-dependent American Sign Language (ASL) structures. A total of 33 deaf ASL adult signers completed tasks examining nonlinguistic VSPT ability, MR ability, general ASL proficiency (ASL-Sentence Reproduction Task [ASL-SRT]), and an ASL comprehension test involving perspective-dependent classifier constructions (the ASL Spatial Perspective Comprehension Test [ASPCT] test). Scores on the linguistic (ASPCT) and VSPT tasks positively correlated with each other and both correlated with MR ability; however, VSPT abilities predicted linguistic perspective-taking better than did MR ability. ASL-SRT scores correlated with ASPCT accuracy (as both require ASL proficiency) but not with VSPT scores. Therefore, the ability to comprehend perspective-dependent ASL classifier constructions relates to ASL proficiency and to nonlinguistic VSPT and MR abilities.