(no subject)

[azurelunatic]

So it turns out that when JD gets me very drunk, I stop making sense aloud, start finger-spelling to communicate, and play Super Smash Brothers on the Wii, very poorly.

Comments

[kestrelct.livejournal.com]

I also find that I slip into sign more when I am drunk (or not fully booted up in the morning). Interesting.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Interesting indeed.

I wonder whether this is connected to the people who use sign language with their children since babies can apparently start using sign language to communicate earlier than they can use spoken language? Something about the muscle coordination required?

I can imagine that the muscle coordination thing might be coming into play when drunk, too.

[kestrelct.livejournal.com]

I'm learning sign because I work in special ed classrooms and a lot of autistic or other developmentally delayed kids find sign easier than speech. In their case, I think it's less about coordination and more about cognitive requirements. Beats me as to why, but it's way easier when my brain is short of processing power to sign one or two concepts (like "EAT WHAT?") than to speak them, even if I don't bother to wrangle a full sentence in English and wind up saying "eat what?" (which usually results in some funny looks).

[azurelunatic]

I don't have much of a working vocabulary yet, but it really helps when attempting to get across the spelling of something to my father (whose hearing is going) or in a noisy environment.

And it does seem to be far less of a cognitive load than the spoken word.