Three studies are presented in this paper that address how nonsigners perceive the visual prosodic cues in a sign language. In Study 1, adult American nonsigners and users of American Sign Language (ASL) were compared on their sensitivity to the visual cues in ASL Intonational Phrases. In Study 2, hearing, nonsigning American infants were tested using the same stimuli used in Study I to see whether maturity, exposure to gesture, or exposure to sign language is necessary to demonstrate this type of sensitivity. Study 3 addresses nonsigners' and signers' strategies for segmenting Prosodic Words in a sign language. Adult participants from six language groups (3 spoken languages and 3 sign languages) were tested.The results of these three studies indicate that nonsigners have a high degree of sensitivity to sign language prosodic cues at the Intonational Phrase level and the Prosodic Word level; these are attributed to modality or'channel' effects of the visual signal.There are also some differences between signers' and nonsigners' sensitivity; these differences are attributed to language experience or language-particular constraints.This work is useful in understanding the gestural competence of nonsigners and the ways in which this type of competence may contribute to the grammaticalization of these properties in a sign language.

This study explores the perceptual development of intonation in questions and statements in L2 Spanish. It presents cross-sectional data from 189 L2 learners from five different proficiency levels and 10 Spanish native controls. Participants performed an intonation matching task consisting of deciding whether sentences presented aurally and visually matched. Perception accuracy and reaction time results are consistent with the gradual acquisition of intonational cues, particularly for statements and yes-no questions. Statements are identified faster and more accurately than yes-no questions, suggesting that the latter are harder to process and acquire. Consistent with Trimble (2013) and Nibert (2005, 2006), our findings suggest that intermediate II learners are beginning to acquire the intonational cues that distinguish statements from yes-no questions in Spanish.

No abstract

This project provides a preliminary examination of the intonational characteristics of information-seeking, echo-repetition and echo-surprise wh-in-situ questions in Spanish. The analysis of 120 questions from 4 female participants from Northern Peninsular Spanish shows that information-seeking questions have a relatively reduced tonal range, and they are the most likely to have final rising contours. On the other hand, echo-repetition and echo-surprise questions differ mostly in that the former have lower local tonal ranges than the latter. These findings provide support for previous syntactic analyses that argue for differences between information-seeking and echo-questions on one side, and echo-repetition and echo-surprise questions on the other.

The aim of this study was to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología (RLP) journal in commemoration of its fiftieth anniversary in order to discover its evolution as a journal and its scientific production. We extracted a dataset from the Web of Science's principal collection from 1975 to 2017. This contained a total sample of 2,163 scientific documents, which were processed using Excel and SciMat programmes. The bibliometric indicators used were H-Classics, TC2, identification of the most commonly cited authors and journals, and references. We used Lotka's Law to analyse research productivity. Results showed that the content included 48.6% scientific articles and 42.1% book reviews. Spain had the highest number of articles published. Burrhus Skinner, Rubén Ardila, Rogelio Díaz Guerrero, and Albert Bandura were the most commonly cited authors. Analyses revealed certain strengths of and challenges faced by the RLP. Future research should compare these results with journals from other countries.