As we briefly pondered in class, for the sake of having never pondered it before, deaf people do in fact read just the same as those who are able to hear and speak, kind of. In fact, through fMRI, we can see how written language is processed in deaf individuals brains as opposed to signed communication and verbal communication in hearing people. Neville et al., 2007, explores three different groups of peoples brain functions through the use of fMRI including; deaf native ASL signers who learned only to read English visually, normally hearing and speaking native English speakers, and normally hearing native signers of ASL and speakers of English. All participants showed processing of their native language in the classic language processing area of the brain regardless if it is spoken or signed. However, deaf subjects did not process written English in this area in the way that a non-deaf native speaker would. Among many other significant findings, this study concludes that deaf people in a way do read like us, but regardless of the age of acquisition, this purely text based form of communication is not treated by the brain as a language, at least not in the same capacity as ASL in those who cannot hear.
Comments (1)
Excellent! Thanks for the follow up. I wonder, though, whether the results show that the deaf do "read like us" or if the differences in processing are showing us that an othography to meaning route (direct route) is being used instead of an orthography to phonology to meaning route (mediated route). We have to be very careful with "hemisphere" differences...because any number of processing differences could be generated that LH/RH distinction.
Posted by Prof Knupsky | April 11, 2008 4:47 PM
Posted on April 11, 2008 16:47