Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525XD, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Mem Cognit. 2023 Apr;51(3):582-600. doi: 10.3758/s13421-022-01281-7. Epub 2022 Mar 17.
Prior work with hearing children acquiring a spoken language as their first language shows that spatial language and cognition are related systems and spatial language use predicts spatial memory. Here, we further investigate the extent of this relationship in signing deaf children and adults and ask if late sign language exposure, as well as the frequency and the type of spatial language use that might be affected by late exposure, modulate subsequent memory for spatial relations. To do so, we compared spatial language and memory of 8-year-old late-signing children (after 2 years of exposure to a sign language at the school for the deaf) and late-signing adults to their native-signing counterparts. We elicited picture descriptions of Left-Right relations in Turkish Sign Language (Türk İşaret Dili) and measured the subsequent recognition memory accuracy of the described pictures. Results showed that late-signing adults and children were similar to their native-signing counterparts in how often they encoded the spatial relation. However, late-signing adults but not children differed from their native-signing counterparts in the type of spatial language they used. However, neither late sign language exposure nor the frequency and type of spatial language use modulated spatial memory accuracy. Therefore, even though late language exposure seems to influence the type of spatial language use, this does not predict subsequent memory for spatial relations. We discuss the implications of these findings based on the theories concerning the correspondence between spatial language and cognition as related or rather independent systems.
先前针对母语为口语的听力儿童的研究表明，空间语言和认知是相关系统，且空间语言的使用可以预测空间记忆。在此，我们进一步研究了手语聋童和成年手语使用者中这种关系的程度，并探讨了晚期手语接触以及可能受到晚期接触影响的空间语言使用频率和类型是否会调节随后的空间关系记忆。为此，我们比较了 8 岁的晚期手语儿童（在聋人学校接受了 2 年的手语接触后）和晚期手语成人与母语为手语的儿童和成人的空间语言和记忆。我们用土耳其手语（Türk İşaret Dili）引出了左右关系的图片描述，并测量了所描述图片的后续识别记忆准确性。结果表明，晚期手语使用者的成年人和儿童在编码空间关系的频率上与母语为手语的儿童和成人相似。然而，与母语为手语的儿童和成人相比，晚期手语使用者的成年人在他们使用的空间语言类型上存在差异。然而，晚期的手语接触以及空间语言使用的频率和类型都没有调节空间记忆的准确性。因此，即使晚期的语言接触似乎会影响空间语言的使用类型，但这并不能预测随后的空间关系记忆。我们基于空间语言和认知作为相关或独立系统的理论，讨论了这些发现的意义。
