Automaticity in Word & Sign Recognition by Deaf Adults & Children

Three experiments employed the Stroop task to investigate the automaticity of recognizing signs and printed words by prelingually deaf subjects Experiments 1 and 2 involved words for color and signs for color Experiment 3 Involved numerals, printed words for number, and signs for number. In all cases, Incongruent but irrelevant signed and printed stimuli led to Interference in reporting the color or number of stimulus elements, and thus indicated automatic semantic access to the meanings of words and of signs by subjects as early as age eleven. Surprisingly, however, printed words consistently created significantly more interference than did signs. Possible explanations and Implications of these findings are discussed.