Assessing the Effects of Sign Language Experience Versus Deafness on the Leftward Reading Span

Both deafness and sign language experience impact the distribution of visual attention, and either factor could affect reading span size, the area around fixation from which useful information is obtained. In contrast to the typical asymmetrical span (smaller on the left), deaf signers have a larger leftward span than skill-matched hearing readers. We investigated whether this enhanced span is due to changes in visual attention associated with early deafness or sign language experience (right-handed signs fall in the left periphery). A gaze-contingent moving-window paradigm was used to assess the leftward reading span of hearing early signers, deaf early signers, and hearing nonsigners with similar reading abilities. The size of the leftward span for deaf and hearing signers was the same (10 characters) and was larger than that of hearing nonsigners (4 characters). Thus, sign language experience appears to be at least one source of the larger leftward span in deaf signers. However, deaf signers were more efficient readers than both hearing groups (faster reading rate, more skipped words, fewer regressions), suggesting that their greater reading efficiency does not stem solely from a larger leftward span.