Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

How might differences in linguistic modality influence the mental lexicon? The mental lexicon offers a window into conceptual domains and the shape of memory. On the other hand, the distinction between concrete-abstract offers a suitable approach for a comparative study. So far, studies comparing the organization of the mental lexicon between Deaf and hearers indicate similarity in lexical knowledge. This research asked if Deaf and hearing people have similar conceptual organizations of the domains of time and space. In their respective language, sixty-two participants made a repeated free association task with dual-class pieces in a concurrent domain clue format. The results showed less clustering for the deaf than the hearing group and opposed tendencies to establish semantic relations. The results matched those of previous studies done on different aged groups. The results suggest that factors associated with linguistic modality modulate the abstractness or concreteness of concepts.