This study aimed to understand how visually degraded conditions affect the intelligibility of isolated signs in sign language, and how these conditions influence perceived difficulty. Twenty-nine fluent users of Swedish Sign Language viewed 100 isolated signs presented under two types of visual degradation: spectral degradation (pixelation) and background noise (salt-and-pepper noise), each across five levels of...
No actionable change for clinical audiology practice; this basic science finding is relevant to sign language research and sensory processing theory but does not directly guide audiological assessment or treatment.
Demonstrating cross-modal parallels between visual sign language and auditory spoken language perception deepens our understanding of how the brain processes language under degraded sensory conditions, with implications for rehabilitation and communication accessibility research.
- 0129 fluent sign language users participated in the study.
- 02Visually degraded conditions impaired sign language intelligibility in measurable ways.
- 03Behavioural patterns mirrored those seen in spoken language perception under acoustic noise.
- 04Findings suggest shared or analogous perceptual mechanisms across auditory and visual language modalities.
- 05Results have implications for understanding communication accessibility and sensory substitution.
Visually degraded conditions reduce sign language intelligibility in ways behaviourally analogous to spoken language perception under noise.
studypartially supported- PMID
- 42288658
- DOI
- 10.1038/s41598-026-57531-0.
- Journal
- Scientific Reports
- Publication type
- research_article
- Evidence level
- 4
- Sample size
- 29
- Population
- Fluent sign language users
- Intervention
- Visually degraded conditions during sign language perception
- Comparator
- Non-degraded visual conditions
Primary outcomes
Sign language intelligibility under visually degraded conditions; Behavioural analogies with spoken language perception under noise