How grammar can cope with limited short-term memory: Simultaneity and seriality in sign languages

Geraci, Carlo; Gozzi, Marta; Papagno, Costanza; Cecchetto, Carlo

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2007.04.014

Cited by 92 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…These findings support and extend previous behavioural findings showing that sign language users, both deaf and hearing do not process order information in WM in the same Temporal organization in WM 19 way as hearing non-signers (Bavelier, Newport et al, 2008;Boutla, Supalla, Newport & Bavelier, 2004;Geraci, Gozzi, Papagno & Cecchetto, 2008;Marschark & Mayer, 1998;O'Connor & Hermelin, 1973;1976;Rönnberg et al, 2004;Rudner & Rönnberg, 2008a;Wilson, Bettger, Niculae & Klima, 1997;Wilson & Emmorey, 2003) The neuroimaging literature has also shown that although WM for sign language in both hearing (Rönnberg et al, 2004) and deaf (Bavelier, Newman et al, 2008;Buchsbaum et al, 2005;Pa, Wilson, Pickell, Bellugi & Hickok, 2008) signers is supported by neural networks similar to those in hearing non-signers, there is net engagement of the superior parietal cortex bilaterally for WM for sign language (Bavelier, Newman et al, 2008;Rönnberg et al, 2004) which may be related to retrieval processes (Bavelier, Newman et al, 2008).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Effects of Age on the Temporal Organization of Working Memory in Deaf Signers

Rudner

Davidsson

Rönnberg

2010

Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition

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Temporal organization in WM 2Deaf native signers have a general working memory (WM) capacity similar to that of hearing non-signers but are less sensitive to the temporal order of stored items on retrieval. General WM capacity declines with age, but little is known of how cognitive aging affects WM function in deaf signers. We investigated WM function in elderly deaf signers (EDS) and an age-matched comparison group of hearing non-signers (EHN) using a paradigm designed to highlight differences in temporal and spatial processing of item and order information. EDS performed worse than EHN on both item and order recognition using a temporal style of presentation. Reanalysis together with earlier data showed that with the temporal style of presentation, order recognition performance for EDS was also lower than for young adult deaf signers (YDS). Older participants responded more slowly than younger participants. These findings suggest that apart from age-related slowing irrespective of sensory and language status, there is an age-related difference specific to deaf signers in the ability to retain order information in WM when temporal processing demands are high. This may be due to neural reorganisation arising from sign language use. Concurrent spatial information with the Mixed style of presentation resulted in enhanced order processing for all groups, suggesting that concurrent temporal and spatial cues may enhance learning for both deaf and hearing groups.These findings support and extend the WM model for Ease of Language Understanding (ELU).Key words: working memory; sign language; deafness; temporal processing Temporal organization in WM 3 Working memory (WM) is the cognitive capacity available for on-line processing and short-term storage of information (Baddeley, 2000) and shows a distinctive developmental trajectory over the life-span with increase in capacity during childhood (Davidson, Amso, Anderson & Diamond, 2006) and decline in old age (Reuter-Lorenz & Cappell, 2008).Depletion of WM capacity with advancing age is accompanied by decline in other cognitive functions such as perceptual speed, episodic memory and word fluency (Lindenberger & Ghisletta, 2009). The causal mechanisms of changing WM capacity are yet to be established.Adequate working memory (WM) function is a prerequisite for language processing irrespective of language modality (Baddeley, 2003). However, the architecture of WM in both cognitive and neural terms may differ depending on the modality habitually used (see Rudner,Andin & Rönnberg, in press for a review). Previous work has shown that although there are striking similarities in the architecture of WM for sign-based languages and speech-based languages there are none the less intriguing differences which promise to teach us deeper truths about the nature of this fundamental cognitive function.Sign languages are natural languages that are the preferred medium of communication of people who are born deaf (Emmorey, 2002). Rudner and Rönnberg (2008a) reported a series of studies which ...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Effects of Age on the Temporal Organization of Working Memory in Deaf Signers

Rudner

Davidsson

Rönnberg

2010

Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition

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“…This finding suggests that better visuospatial processing for deaf signers than hearing nonsigners (Geraci et al, 2008) with the Corsi blocks task does not generalize to non-linguistic manual actions when there is no requirement for spatial processing. However, it does 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 support the notion that non-signers capitalize on existing motor representations during a gesture-based WM task, even when the to-be-remembered items are non-linguistic manual actions, in line with the findings of Rudner (2015).…”

Section: Effect Of Sign Language Experiencementioning

confidence: 77%

Preexisting semantic representation improves working memory performance in the visuospatial domain

et al. 2016

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Working memory (WM) for spoken language improves when to-be-remembered items correspond to pre-existing representations in long-term memory. We investigated whether this effect generalizes to the visuospatial domain by administering a visual n-back WM task to deaf signers and hearing signers as well as hearing non-signers. There were four different kinds of stimuli: British Sign Language (BSL, familiar to the signers); Swedish Sign Language

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“…Many studies have reported larger spans in the spoken than the signed modality for forward serial recall tasks, including digit, letter, and word span tasks (e.g. Bavelier, Newport, Hall, Supalla, & Boutla, 2006, 2008; Boutla, Supalla, Newport, & Bavelier, 2004; Geraci, Gozzi, Papagno, & Cecchetto, 2008; Hall & Bavelier, 2011; Wilson, Bettger, Niculae, & Klima, 1997; but see also Andin et al, 2013; Wilson & Emmorey, 2006a, 2006b). Importantly, modality differences are typically not found in backwards serial recall tasks or in tasks with reduced temporal organization demands, such as free recall (e.g., Bavelier, Newport et al, 2008; Boutla et al, 2004; Rudner, Davidsson, & Rönnberg, 2010; Rudner & Rönnberg, 2008a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relation between working memory and language comprehension in signers and speakers

et al. 2017

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This study investigated the relation between linguistic and spatial working memory (WM) resources and language comprehension for signed compared to spoken language. Sign languages are both linguistic and visual-spatial, and therefore provide a unique window on modality-specific versus modality-independent contributions of WM resources to language processing. Deaf users of American Sign Language (ASL), hearing monolingual English speakers, and hearing ASL-English bilinguals completed several spatial and linguistic serial recall tasks. Additionally, their comprehension of spatial and non-spatial information in ASL and spoken English narratives was assessed. Results from the linguistic serial recall tasks revealed that the often reported advantage for speakers on linguistic short-term memory tasks does not extend to complex WM tasks with a serial recall component. For English, linguistic WM predicted retention of non-spatial information, and both linguistic and spatial WM predicted retention of spatial information. For ASL, spatial WM predicted retention of spatial (but not non-spatial) information, and linguistic WM did not predict retention of either spatial or non-spatial information. Overall, our findings argue against strong assumptions of independent domain-specific subsystems for the storage and processing of linguistic and spatial information and furthermore suggest a less important role for serial encoding in signed than spoken language comprehension.

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How grammar can cope with limited short-term memory: Simultaneity and seriality in sign languages

Cited by 92 publications

References 40 publications

Effects of Age on the Temporal Organization of Working Memory in Deaf Signers

Effects of Age on the Temporal Organization of Working Memory in Deaf Signers

Preexisting semantic representation improves working memory performance in the visuospatial domain

The relation between working memory and language comprehension in signers and speakers

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