中文閱讀時臺灣手語音韻之周邊預視效益

Use of Phonological Representations of Taiwan Sign Language in Chinese Reading: Evidence from Deaf Signers

台灣失聰者可以使用中文與台灣手語來溝通，本研究欲瞭解失聰台灣手語使用者之台灣手語音韻表徵對於於中文閱讀時的影響。實驗使用眼動邊界典範與眼動誘發呈現改變技術（Rayner, 1975），研究假設若受試者若可在周邊視野擷取到詞彙相關訊息，則當眼睛通過設定邊界使得預視詞立即取代為目標詞時，眼睛凝視目標詞的處理便會受到影響。實驗操弄目標詞與預視詞的台灣手語音韻相關性（相關、無關），其中音韻相關手語之中文詞組指的是台灣手語手形相同，受試者被要求閱讀理解句子並判斷合理性，記錄其眼動指標與句子理解的正確性。此外，由於台灣手語翻譯為與中文詞時，可能為一個或兩個字的中文詞，透過於實驗一為預視詞與目標詞為一個字的中文詞，實驗二為預視詞與目標詞改為兩個字的中文詞，可以協助瞭解失聰手語者於中文閱讀時，台灣手語知識對於中文對詞的影響。結果發現：在一個字的中文詞中，手語音韻預視效果可在失聰手語者的第一凝視時間與凝視次數中顯示出來；在兩個字的中文詞中，手語音韻預視效果則是在第一凝視時間與凝視時間中發現，但在非口語失聰組中未出現；此外，由實驗一與實驗二的結果顯示，失聰手語者在閱讀中文時，無論中文詞為單字詞或雙字詞，手語音韻不僅會被自動激發，同時，中文斷詞的運作也會與一般中文閱讀者一樣，先是次詞彙，之後再整合為詞彙地進行；一般聽人組則未有任何台灣手語音韻的預視效果。簡而言之，失聰手語者於中文閱讀理解時，會激發包含台灣手語音韻的表徵。

Purpose: Deaf people in Taiwan use Mandarin Chinese and Taiwan Sign Language (TSL) to communicate. This study explored the nature of the representations that deaf signers use during Chinese reading by using the invisible boundary and display change technique, in which a preview word is replaced by a target word when the reader’s eyes cross an invisible boundary to the left of the target word. A target word processed faster when the preview is related to the target word than when it is unrelated to the target word is considered a preview benefit effect. This study investigated the preview benefits of phonological information for Taiwan Sign Language (TSLph). Methods: This study invited 35 deaf signers and 30 hearing readers. We manipulated preview words with either phonologically related or unrelated words in TSL. Different TSL lexicons can be corresponded to either Chinese one-character or two-character words. To clarify the influence of inconsistency in translation of TSL to Chinese words on Chinese reading among deaf signers, one-character and two-character words frequently signed in TSL were used in Experiment 1 and 2, respectively. Experiment 1 had 45 reasonable sentences (30 with preview words and 15 with identical words) and 30 nonsensical sentences, and Experiment 2 had 36 reasonable sentences (24 with preview words and 12 with identical words) and 24 unreasonable sentences. The subjects were asked to decide whether a given sentence was reasonable according to their comprehension of the whole sentence. Findings: When considering the previous fixation location, the results demonstrated TSLph preview benefits among deaf signers for one-character words in the first-fixation duration (FFD) and first-run fixation count and for two-character Chinese words in FFD and gaze duration during a sentence comprehension task. The inconsistency in the translation of Chinese words to TSL did not disturb word segmentation in Chinese reading among these skilled deaf readers. Conclusions/Implications: The preview effects of words phonologically related in TSL were observed for deaf but not for hearing readers. These findings confirmed that deaf signers use TSL phonological representations during reading.