Use of Phonological Representations of Taiwan Sign Language in Chinese Reading: Evidence from Deaf Signers

Abstract

Purpose: Deaf people in Taiwan use Mandarin Chinese and Taiwan Sign Language (TSL) to communicate. This study explored the nature of the representations that deaf signers use during Chinese reading by using the invisible boundary and display change technique, in which a preview word is replaced by a target word when the reader’s eyes cross an invisible boundary to the left of the target word. A target word processed faster when the preview is related to the target word than when it is unrelated to the target word is considered a preview benefit effect. This study investigated the preview benefits of phonological information for Taiwan Sign Language (TSLph). Methods: This study invited 35 deaf signers and 30 hearing readers. We manipulated preview words with either phonologically related or unrelated words in TSL. Different TSL lexicons can be corresponded to either Chinese one-character or two-character words. To clarify the influence of inconsistency in translation of TSL to Chinese words on Chinese reading among deaf signers, one-character and two-character words frequently signed in TSL were used in Experiment 1 and 2, respectively. Experiment 1 had 45 reasonable sentences (30 with preview words and 15 with identical words) and 30 nonsensical sentences, and Experiment 2 had 36 reasonable sentences (24 with preview words and 12 with identical words) and 24 unreasonable sentences. The subjects were asked to decide whether a given sentence was reasonable according to their comprehension of the whole sentence. Findings: When considering the previous fixation location, the results demonstrated TSLph preview benefits among deaf signers for one-character words in the first-fixation duration (FFD) and first-run fixation count and for two-character Chinese words in FFD and gaze duration during a sentence comprehension task. The inconsistency in the translation of Chinese words to TSL did not disturb word segmentation in Chinese reading among these skilled deaf readers. Conclusions/Implications: The preview effects of words phonologically related in TSL were observed for deaf but not for hearing readers. These findings confirmed that deaf signers use TSL phonological representations during reading.