This study investigates how American Sign Language (ASL) fluency and hearing status influence the perception of biological motion, using three point-light display (PLD) tasks. Prior research indicates that early exposure to ASL among deaf signers results in more rapid and effortless recognition of biological motion than hearing nonsigners, potentially due to the expertise in deciphering complex human movements or possibly due to neuroplasticity in deaf brains. However, it remains uncertain whether this advantage stems from signed language proficiency or the experience of being deaf. To explore this, we designed three PLD tasks involving viewing randomly moving dots, identifying a person from biological motion PLDs, and determining whether right-side up and inverted PLDs depict actions involving a ball. A diverse cohort of participants (N = 224) with varying ASL fluencies and hearing statuses completed the tasks online, providing us with reaction time and accuracy data. Our results demonstrate that earlier ASL exposure is associated with accuracy, especially on complex action identification tasks. Furthermore, we discovered robust evidence for a speed-accuracy trade-off in deaf participants, in which they performed more quickly but less accurately. The speed-accuracy trade-off was evident in the most difficult task, the action identification task. Further analysis of this deaf group revealed that earlier signed language acquisition led to higher accuracy in action identification task. We conclude that age of ASL exposure and hearing status both significantly contribute to variations in biological motion perception, with implications for understanding visual expertise and cognitive processing in both deaf and signing populations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

---

与听力状态和手语暴露年龄相关的生物运动感知差异。


本研究使用三个点光显示 （PLD） 任务调查了美国手语 （ASL） 流利度和听力状态如何影响对生物运动的感知。先前的研究表明，与听不见手语的人相比，聋人手语者早期接触 ASL 可以更快速、更轻松地识别生物运动，这可能是由于破译复杂人类运动的专业知识，也可能是由于聋人大脑的神经可塑性。然而，目前仍不确定这种优势是源于手语熟练度还是聋人的经验。为了探索这一点，我们设计了三个 PLD 任务，包括查看随机移动的点，从生物运动 PLD 中识别一个人，以及确定正面朝上和倒置的 PLD 是否描绘涉及球的动作。具有不同 ASL 流利度和听力状态的不同参与者队列 （N = 224） 在线完成了任务，为我们提供了反应时间和准确性数据。我们的结果表明，早期的 ASL 暴露与准确性相关，尤其是在复杂的动作识别任务中。此外，我们发现了聋人参与者速度-准确性权衡的有力证据，其中他们的表现更快但准确性更低。速度与准确性的权衡在最困难的任务 - 动作识别任务中很明显。对这个聋人组的进一步分析表明，早期的手语习得导致动作识别任务的准确性更高。我们得出结论，ASL 暴露年龄和听力状况都显着导致生物运动感知的变化，对理解聋人和手语人群的视觉专业知识和认知处理有影响。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 （c） 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。