External speakers: Amy M. Lieberman. Development of attentional control for language learning and processing in signing deaf children

What: Development of attentional control for language learning and processing in signing deaf children

Where: BCBL Auditorium and Auditorium zoom room (If you would like to attend to this meeting reserve at info@bcbl.eu)

Who: Amy M. Lieberman, PhD. Director, Doctoral Studies and Associate Professor, Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, Boston University, MA, US

When:  Wednesday, March 18th at 12:00 pm/noon.

Young children leverage a range of cues to map language input onto the surrounding visual world. For children learning spoken language, simultaneous perception of auditory linguistic input and visual information about objects and events facilitates word learning. In contrast, for deaf children learning a sign language such as American Sign Language (ASL), linguistic and visual information are both perceived visually. Thus, deaf children need to learn to allocate visual attention sequentially to map words onto their referents. In this talk I will present research investigating the development of visual attention for sign language processing and learning in deaf children. Leveraging a range of approaches including eye-tracking experiments and observations of natural interactions, I demonstrate how the temporal dynamics of attention are shaped by the modality of the language learner, and suggest that studying sign language expands our understanding of the cognitive control of attention.