ArticleNeuroImage2020
The impact of early language exposure on the neural system supporting language in deaf and hearing adults.
Article in NeuroImage, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 35 citations in OpenAlex.
- Differential cross-modal functional plasticity in deaf individuals: A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies.iScience · 2026Article
- The Comodification of Brain Activity, Functional Connectivity, and Behavior Following Learning.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- A multidimensional framework for dissociating the neuroplasticity of auditory and early language deprivation.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Utilizing functional neuroimaging to study early language development.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2025Review
- Nonverbal Communication Processing in Deaf Adults: An Activation Likelihood Estimation Meta-Analysis.Brain sciences · 2025Review
- Article
- Distinct neural representations of different linguistic components following sign language learning.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Language anxiety: understanding past research and new directions with d/Deaf, DeafBlind, and hard of hearing communities.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Review
- Article
- Learning a Sign Language Does Not Hinder Acquisition of a Spoken Language.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR · 2023Article
- Language Intervention Instead of Speech Intervention for Children With Cochlear Implants.Journal of audiology & otology · 2023Review
- Associations Between Sign Language Skills and Resting-State Functional Connectivity in Deaf Early Signers.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- New Perspectives on the Neurobiology of Sign Languages.Frontiers in communication · 2021Article
- The role of the superior parietal lobule in lexical processing of sign language: Insights from fMRI and TMS.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2021Article
- Acquisition of Sign Languages.Annual review of linguistics · 2021Article
- Sensitive periods in cortical specialization for language: insights from studies with Deaf and blind individuals.Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2020Article
- The Neural Network for Sign Language Comprehension.Language and linguistics compassArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Deaf late signers provide a unique perspective on the impact of impoverished early language exposure on the neurobiology of language: insights that cannot be gained from research with hearing people alone. Here we contrast the effect of age of sign language acquisition in hearing and congenitally deaf adults to examine the potential impact of impoverished early language exposure on the neural systems supporting a language learnt later in life. We collected fMRI data from deaf and hearing proficient users (N = 52) of British Sign Language (BSL), who learnt BSL either early (native) or late (after the age of 15 years) whilst they watched BSL sentences or strings of meaningless nonsense signs. There was a main effect of age of sign language acquisition (late > early) across deaf and hearing signers in the occipital segment of the left intraparietal sulcus. This finding suggests that late learners of sign language may rely on visual processing more than early learners, when processing both linguistic and nonsense sign input - regardless of hearing status. Region-of-interest analyses in the posterior superior temporal cortices (STC) showed an effect of age of sign language acquisition that was specific to deaf signers. In the left posterior STC, activation in response to signed sentences was greater in deaf early signers than deaf late signers. Importantly, responses in the left posterior STC in hearing early and late signers did not differ, and were similar to those observed in deaf early signers. These data lend further support to the argument that robust early language experience, whether signed or spoken, is necessary for left posterior STC to show a 'native-like' response to a later learnt language.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.