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Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education Advance Access published online on October 1, 2008
The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, doi:10.1093/deafed/enn037
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Eye Gaze During Comprehension of American Sign Language by Native and Beginning Signers

Karen Emmorey

San Diego State University

Robin Thompson

University College London

Rachael Colvin

University of California, San Diego


  Abstract

An eye-tracking experiment investigated where deaf native signers (N = 9) and hearing beginning signers (N = 10) look while comprehending a short narrative and a spatial description in American Sign Language produced live by a fluent signer. Both groups fixated primarily on the signer's face (more than 80% of the time) but differed with respect to fixation location. Beginning signers fixated on or near the signer's mouth, perhaps to better perceive English mouthing, whereas native signers tended to fixate on or near the eyes. Beginning signers shifted gaze away from the signer's face more frequently than native signers, but the pattern of gaze shifts was similar for both groups. When a shift in gaze occurred, the sign narrator was almost always looking at his or her hands and was most often producing a classifier construction. We conclude that joint visual attention and attention to mouthing (for beginning signers), rather than linguistic complexity or processing load, affect gaze fixation patterns during sign language comprehension.

Correspondence should be sent to Karen Emmorey, Laboratory for Language and Cognitive Neuroscience, 6495 Alvarado Road, Suite 200, San Diego, CA 92102 (e-mail: kemmorey{at}mail.sdsu.edu).

Received June 20, 2008; revised August 29, 2008; accepted September 3, 2008


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