Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In sign languages, gazing towards one's interlocutor is necessary to perceive the language visually. Proficient signers have been found to look at their interlocutor's face, rather than hands, while communicating in ASL. We investigated signers' looks to the face vs. hands while perceiving ASL signs, fingerspelled words, pseudo signs, and fingerspelled pseudowords. Participants' gaze was monitored as they viewed a picture followed by a short, isolated video clip of the corresponding sign or fingerspelled word. We found that participants tended to look at the face more than the hands when perceiving signs vs. pseudosigns, and when perceiving signs vs. fingerspelled words. Age of acquisition did not significantly impact gaze patterns. Results suggest that sign perceivers actively adjust their allocation of gaze based on the perceptual demands of the input.