While processing spoken language, people look towards relevant objects, and the time course of their gaze(s) can inform us about online language processing (Tanenhaus et al, 1995). Here, we investigate lexical recognition in British Sign Language (BSL) using a visual world paradigm, the first such study using a signed language. Comprehension of spoken words and signs could be driven by temporal...

Abstract If cochlear implants continue to meet with much resistance from parts of the Deaf community and beyond, this reflects constructions speech that have been at core conceptions humankind for over three centuries. Starting in 1750s, Julien Offray de La Mettrie advocated deaf people's potential speech. This was also time creation schools children, which led a surge debate about teaching sig...

In a single study, silent speechreading and signed language processing were investigated using fMRI. Deaf native signers of British sign language (BSL) who were also proficient speechreaders of English were the focus of the research. Separate analyses contrasted different aspects of the data. In the first place, we found that the left superior temporal cortex, including auditory regions, was st...

For more than a century we have understood that our brain's left hemisphere is the primary site for processing language, yet why this is so has remained more elusive. Using positron emission tomography, we report cerebral blood flow activity in profoundly deaf signers processing specific aspects of sign language in key brain sites widely assumed to be unimodal speech or sound processing areas: ...