Individual differences in lexical learning across two language modalities: Sign learning, word learning, and their relationship in hearing non-signing adults

Abstract

A considerable amount of research has been devoted to understanding individual differences in lexical learning, however, the majority of this research has been conducted with spoken languages rather than signed languages and thus we know very little about the cognitive processes involved in sign learning or the extent to which lexical learning processes are specific to word learning. The present study was conducted to address this gap. Two-hundred thirty-six non-signing adults completed 25 tasks assessing word learning and sign learning (via associative learning paradigms) as well as modality-specific phonological short-term memory, working memory capacity, crystallized intelligence, and fluid intelligence. Latent variable analyses indicated that, when other variables were held constant, fluid intelligence was predictive of both word and sign learning, however, modality-specific phonological short-term memory factors were only predictive of lexical learning within modality-none of the other variables made significant independent contributions. It was further observed that sign and word learning were strongly correlated. Exploratory analyses revealed that all lexical learning tasks loaded onto a general factor, however, sign learning tasks loaded onto an additional specific factor. As such, this study provides insight into the cognitive components that are common to associative L2 lexical learning regardless of language modality and those that are unique to either signed or spoken languages. Results are further discussed in light of established and more recent theories of intelligence, short-term memory, and working memory.

The effect of bilingualism on lexical learning and memory across two language modalities: some evidence for a domain-specific, but not general, advantage

“…Appendix C displays means, dispersion statistics, and internal consistency coefficients for the full set of 190 participants. Moreover, in a prior study (Martinez & Singleton, 2018a), we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis with the cognitive constructs under consideration and found evidence of convergent and discriminant validity.…”

“…The present study was part of a larger study that was undertaken to investigate the relationships between sign learning and word learning (Martinez & Singleton, 2018a). Given the diversity of our university and of the Atlanta community (where the study took place), we expected a large number of our participants would be bilingual, thus, a priori, we planned to use data from the primary study to replicate prior research on word learning and spoken phonological STM and to extend it to the sign domain.…”

Earlier and More Robust Sensorimotor Discrimination of ASL Signs in Deaf Signers During Imitation

“…The difficulty of the task for Hearing Non-Signers likely had a strong influence over these unexpected results. For hearing non-signers, learning ASL signs draws upon working memory capacity, particularly phonological short-term memory (Martinez & Singleton, 2018). Beta event-related synchronization at frontal electrode sites is greater during simple working memory tasks compared to a more difficult task (Pesonen, Hämäläinen, & Krause, 2007).…”

“…The hearing non-signers in our experiment may have been stressed by the task at hand, prompting them to develop various strategies to hold the motor plans in place before imitation occurred, and necessitating mental rotation-related skills due to the need to produce an action which had only been seen from the third-person perspective (Shield & Meier, 2018). Hearing participants’ development, testing, and use of these various strategies (e.g., covert rehearsal, attempts to make semantic links, attempting to memorize motor sequences) may be a significant source of mental effort in a task such as ours (Martinez & Singleton, 2018), which likely influences the neural oscillatory patterns during sign production (Gelastopoulos et al, 2019). This aligns with other prior research showing that hearing non-signers show increased effortful attention during sign perception (Williams, Darcy, & Newman, 2016).…”

Immediate and long-term memory and their relation to crystallized and fluid intelligence

“…The present study utilized data from a study investigating predictors of lexical learning in signed and spoken language amongst hearing non-signing adults (Martinez & Singleton, 2019).…”