Visual learning curves for American sign language (ASL) alphabet

The study objectives include: 1) to identify the visual key areas and the learning curves when learning the ASL alphabet, 2) to identify the impact of practice on key visual areas, and 3) to identify differences in visual learning curves between signs. An empirical behavioral study with twenty ASL untrained hearing participants performing the ASL alphabet for eight consecutive trials using virtual reality and eye-tracking was conducted. After completing the experiment, participants reduced the fixation duration by 51.90% and the observation count by 45.69%. The representations of the fingers acquired 66% of the fixation duration. In addition, the observation proportion for the visual instructions for the fingers decreased from 59% to 41% after 8 trials. An ANOVA analysis showed unequal variance for ASL signs, and a power regression showed different learning rates for all signs. Our experimental setting successfully tracked and identified the key visual areas when learning the ASL alphabet. •Practice allowed participants to identify key visual areas when learning the ASL alphabet.•Fingers representations acquired most of the fixation duration.•Practice allowed participants to reduce fixation duration and fixation count.•ASL alphabet signs have different learning rates.