Communication of Agent, Object, and Indirect Object in Signed and Spoken Languages

A picture-description task was used to study the comparative effectiveness of communication between deaf subjects using American Sign Language, and hearing subjects using spoken English: 16 deaf, native users of American Sign Language and 16 hearing, native users of English. All subjects were university undergraduate students. Within the two groups, paired subjects alternately described pictures to each other. Pictures illustrated three different characters assuming in turn the roles of agent, object, and indirect object. Following a description by Subject1, Subject2 selected the picture he or she thought Subject1 had described, from a set of 6 pictures containing the described picture. The frequency of errors did not differ significantly between signing and speaking subjects.