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Leveraging Visuospatial ASL for Better Conceptual Understanding in STEM Education
Poster Session A, Friday, September 12, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm, Field House
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Rachel Sortino1, Christina Kim1, Thalia Guettler1, Katie McClyman1, Colin Lualdi2, Alicia Wooten1, Lorna Quandt1, Rachel Pizzie1; 1Gallaudet University, Washington DC, USA, 2University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA
Deaf and hard-of-hearing students face various obstacles to pursuing careers in STEM fields. One commonly cited obstacle is the lack of conceptually sound, consistent STEM signs in American Sign Language (ASL). Many groups have begun developing these signs, which often leverage the visuospatial nature of ASL to support conceptual understanding. For instance, a new sign for acid is made with one hand in a fist, representing a molecule, while the other hand makes the H-handshape (Hydrogen) and moves away from the fist, showing that acids lose Hydrogen ions when mixed with water. The same handshapes can become the sign for base by reversing the direction of the movement, because bases accept Hydrogen ions when mixed with water. The development of these signs was motivated by wanting to make concepts and the connections between them more transparent by using a shared visuospatial morphology. As such, we will call them conceptually motivated (CM) signs. We propose that CM signs allow for embodied connections between action and the concept, as signers can use their bodies to create more concrete conceptual representations for abstract ideas, similar to the use of iconic gestures to support learning. Because the development of CM signs emphasized the importance of their morphological relationships, we will test their effectiveness within lectures where those connections can be more effectively leveraged for learners. We will do this by using previously validated videos on four STEM topics, each in two signing styles. One style is more linear/English-influenced and incorporates fingerspelling and traditional signs for key vocabulary, while the other is a more visuospatial style that incorporates CM signs. This proposed study will use a within-participant, pre- and post-test design to compare differences in learning from the two signing styles. Participants will complete a pre-test before viewing our training videos. Each participant will watch four, 5-minute-long training videos on different STEM topics, two in each signing style. They will sign a 1 to 2-minute summary after each video. After watching all four videos, they will complete a post-test and a cognitive matching task where they will see words and images related to the topics they learned about and judge if they match or not. During this task, we will measure electroencephalography (EEG) signal, focusing on mu-rhythm desynchronization, a common measure of embodiment in which increased desynchronization in alpha-range frequencies near the sensorimotor cortex is related to mirror neuron system activation. Finally, participants will complete post-tests one day and one week after training. We predict that for concepts learned with the more spatial, CM signs, participants will rely more on the signs for those concepts and thus exhibit higher levels of desynchronization when participants view the related English words as compared to concepts they learned with the more English-influenced signs. Further, we predict that this heightened embodiment will be linked to more improvement from pre-test to post-test for content learned in the more spatial, CM style. These results will provide insights into the potential for using CM, visuospatial language to support STEM learning.
Topic Areas: Signed Language and Gesture, Multisensory or Sensorimotor Integration