Can sign-naïve adults learn about the phonological regularities of an unfamiliar sign language from minimal exposure (original) (raw)
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Frontiers in Psychology, 2022
A key challenge when learning language in naturalistic circumstances is to extract linguistic information from a continuous stream of speech. This study investigates the predictors of such implicit learning among adults exposed to a new language in a new modality (a sign language). Sign-naïve participants (N = 93; British English speakers) were shown a 4-min weather forecast in Swedish Sign Language. Subsequently, we tested their ability to recognise 22 target sign forms that had been viewed in the forecast, amongst 44 distractor signs that had not been viewed. The target items differed in their occurrence frequency in the forecast and in their degree of iconicity. The results revealed that both frequency and iconicity facilitated recognition of target signs cumulatively. The adult mechanism for language learning thus operates similarly on sign and spoken languages as regards frequency, but also exploits modality-salient properties, for example iconicity for sign languages. Individual differences in cognitive skills and language learning background did not predict recognition. The properties of the input thus influenced adults' language learning abilities at first exposure more than individual differences.
Memory & Cognition, 1989
In two studies, we find that native and non-native acquisition show different effects on sign language processing. Subjects were all born deaf and used sign language for interpersonal communication, but first acquired it at ages ranging from birth to 18. In the first study, deaf signers shadowed (simultaneously watched and reproduced) sign language narratives given in two dialects, American Sign Language (ASL) and Pidgin Sign English (PSE), in both good and poor viewing conditions. In the second study, deaf signers recalled and shadowed grammatical and ungrammatical ASL sentences. In comparison with non-native signers, natives were more accurate, comprehended better, and made different kinds of lexical changes; natives primarily changed signs in relation to sign meaning independent of the phonological characteristics of the stimulus. In contrast, non-native signers primarily changed signs in relation to the phonological characteristics of the stimulus independent of lexical and sentential meaning. Semantic lexical changes were positively correlated to processing accuracy and comprehension, whereas phonological lexical changes were negatively correlated. The effects of non-native acquisition were similar across variations in the sign dialect, viewing condition, and processing task. The results suggest that native signers process lexical structure automatically, such that they can attend to and remember lexical and sentential meaning. In contrast, non-native signers appear to allocate more attention to the task of identifying phonological shape such that they have less attention available for retrieval and memory of lexical meaning.
Knowledge of Language Transfers From Speech to Sign: Evidence From Doubling
Cognitive Science
Does knowledge of language transfer across language modalities? For example, can speakers who have had no sign language experience spontaneously project grammatical principles of English to American Sign Language (ASL) signs? To address this question, here, we explore a grammatical illusion. Using spoken language, we first show that a single word with doubling (e.g., trafraf) can elicit conflicting linguistic responses, depending on the level of linguistic analysis (phonology vs. morphology). We next show that speakers with no command of a sign language extend these same principles to novel ASL signs. Remarkably, the morphological analysis of ASL signs depends on the morphology of participants' spoken language. Speakers of Malayalam (a language with rich reduplicative morphology) prefer XX signs when doubling signals morphological plurality, whereas no such preference is seen in speakers of Mandarin (a language with no productive plural morphology). Our conclusions open up the possibility that some linguistic principles are amodal and abstract.
Cognitive Psychology, 2004
The present study examines the impact of highly inconsistent input on language acquisition. The American deaf community provides a unique opportunity to observe children exposed to nonnative language models as their only linguistic input. This research is a detailed case study of one child acquiring his native language in such circumstances. It asks whether this child is capable of organizing a natural language out of input data that are not representative of certain natural language principles. Simon is a deaf child whose deaf parents both learned American Sign Language (ASL) after age 15. SimonÕs only ASL input is provided by his late-learner parents. The study examines SimonÕs performance at age 7 on an ASL morphology task, compared with eight children who have native signing parents, and also compared with SimonÕs own parents. The results show that SimonÕs production of ASL substantially surpasses that of his parents. SimonÕs parents, like other late learners of ASL, perform below adult native signing criteria, with many inconsistencies and errors in their use of ASL morphology. In contrast, SimonÕs performance is much more regular, and in fact on most ASL morphemes is equal to that of children exposed to a native signing model. The results
Effects of language experience on the perception of American Sign Language
Cognition, 2008
Perception of American Sign Language (ASL) handshape and place of articulation parameters was investigated in three groups of signers: deaf native signers, deaf non-native signers who acquired ASL between the ages of 10 and 18, hearing non-native signers who acquired ASL as a second language between the ages of 10 and 26. Participants were asked to identify and discriminate dynamic synthetic signs on forced choice identification and similarity judgement tasks. No differences were found in identification performance, but there were effects of language experience on discrimination of the handshape stimuli. Participants were significantly less likely to discriminate handshape stimuli drawn from the region of the category prototype than stimuli that were peripheral to the category or that straddled a category boundary. This pattern was significant for both groups of deaf signers, but was more pronounced for the native signers. The hearing L2 signers exhibited a similar pattern of discrimination, but results did not reach significance. An effect of category structure on the discrimination of place of articulation stimuli was also found, but it did not interact with language background. We conclude that early experience with a signed language magnifies the influence of category prototypes on the perceptual processing of handshape primes, leading to differences in the distribution of attentional resources between native and non-native signers during language comprehension.
The Link Between Form and Meaning in American Sign Language: Lexical Processing Effects
Signed languages exploit iconicity (the transparent relationship between meaning and form) to a greater extent than spoken languages. where it is largely limited to onomatopoeia. In a picture–sign matching experiment measuring reaction times, the authors examined the potential advantage of iconicity both for 1st- and 2nd-language learners of American Sign Language (ASL). The results show that native ASL signers are faster to respond when a specific property iconically represented in a sign is made salient in the corresponding picture, thus providing evidence that a closer mapping between meaning and form can aid in lexical retrieval. While late 2nd-language learners appear to use iconicity as an aid to learning sign (R. Campbell, P. Martin, & T. White, 1992), they did not show the same facilitation effect as native ASL signers, suggesting that the task tapped into more automatic language processes. Overall, the findings suggest that completely arbitrary mappings between meaning and form may not be more advantageous in language and that, rather, arbitrariness may simply be an accident of modality.
Early acquisition of sign language
Sign Language & Linguistics, 2010
Early acquisition of a natural language, signed or spoken, has been shown to fundamentally impact both one's ability to use the first language, and the ability to learn subsequent languages later in life (Mayberry 2007, 2009). This review summarizes a number of recent neuroimaging studies in order to detail the neural bases of sign language acquisition. The logic of this review is to present research reports that contribute to the bigger picture showing that people who acquire a natural language, spoken or signed, in the normal way possess specialized linguistic abilities and brain functions that are missing or deficient in people whose exposure to natural language is delayed or absent. Comparing the function of each brain region with regards to the processing of spoken and sign languages, we attempt to clarify the role each region plays in language processing in general, and to outline the challenges and remaining questions in understanding language processing in the brain.
Psychological Science, 2017
Iconic mappings between words and their meanings are far more prevalent than once estimated and seem to support children’s acquisition of new words, spoken or signed. We asked whether iconicity’s prevalence in sign language overshadows two other factors known to support the acquisition of spoken vocabulary: neighborhood density (the number of lexical items phonologically similar to the target) and lexical frequency. Using mixed-effects logistic regressions, we reanalyzed 58 parental reports of native-signing deaf children’s productive acquisition of 332 signs in American Sign Language (ASL; Anderson & Reilly, 2002) and found that iconicity, neighborhood density, and lexical frequency independently facilitated vocabulary acquisition. Despite differences in iconicity and phonological structure between signed and spoken language, signing children, like children learning a spoken language, track statistical information about lexical items and their phonological properties and leverage t...