Deaf experimental psychologist Rain Bosworth has found that babies are primed to learn sign language just like spoken language.
In a darkened room in Rochester, N.Y., a baby girl in a pink onesie peers at a computer screen. Wherever she looks, an eye tracker follows — recording her gaze patterns for future analysis.
That idea — that infants are primed to pick up any language, whether spoken or signed — can be hard for people to believe, she says. After all, we live in a hearing-centric world. “There is a bias to think of spoken language as somehow superior to signed language.” But that’s just not true, she says. “Sign language is a full and real language, just as powerful as English.”
In 2022, after three years at RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Bosworth established a new research lab there dubbed PLAY Lab . She’s passionate about reframing negative perceptions of sign language and deaf people. Deaf herself, Bosworth feels she’s the right person to come up with study questions, she tells me via interpreters on Zoom. “I think about science nonstop 24/7.”
It’s a second home for Bosworth too, a place where she can unspool her curiosity and let it fly. There’s a strong inclusive mentality that she’s proud to contribute to. “I’m able to be a role model to all of these students of what a deaf person can do.” Beyond the window for language learning, Bosworth is also investigating how kids explore the world and how they play. How does a child’s background and hearing status influence their behaviors? Do deaf kids rely on their sense of touch more than hearing kids? Do specific types of play affect how children learn language?For Bosworth, it’s not enough to make scientific strides in a field dominated by hearing people. She wants to bring deaf people along with her by mentoring students.
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