Spanish sign language comprehension

This study compares sign and oral language in terms of information transmission efficiency. The study sample were 36 signing deaf persons 36 hearing persons who bad good knowledge of sign language, and 36 hearing persons who had no knowledge of sign language. Oral and sign language comprehension were assessed using texts with three different difficulty levels. After being exposed to the texts, subjects bad to explain what they had understood, answer a set of related questions', and give the text a title. Comprehension assessment of subjects' account evaluated, among others, explicit contents, invented ideas, and number of comprehension errors. The results show that deaf subjects' signed comprehension was higher than that of hearing subjects using oral language with respect to explicit contents, invented ideas and number of errors. Hearing subjects' oral comprehension was higher than deaf subjects' signed comprehension with respect to their answers to closed text questions. On the other hand comparisons between signed and oral comprehension in bilingual subjects showed that they differed in 1) the quantity of explicit contents mentioned and the number of repetitions requested to understand the text, in both cases higher in the signed version; 2) subjects' self-assessment of their own comprehension which was higher in oral comprehension, The results indicate that sign language allows individuals to convey abstract and complex information in a manner similar to oral language. However, the age sign language is learned can affect the number and type of errors made in signed comprehension.