Looking through phonological shape to lexical meaning: The bottleneck of non-native sign language processing

Abstract

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 oflexical 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.Recent research has uncovered numerous linguistic and psychological parallels between speech and sign language. These striking similarities demonstrate that the process of deriving meaning from linguistic form is very abstract. Changing the peripheral sensory and motor channel of language expression and comprehension from audition and oral articulation to vision and manual articulation does not appear to alter the basic way in which language is processed (Grosjean, 1980;Poizner, Klima, & Bellugi, 1987;Siple, 1982). However, the recent discoveries about sign language characterize the processing of the most

Effects of sign language experience on categorical perception of dynamic ASL pseudosigns

“…Thus, they may actually be best considered as late functional L1-sign learners, a situation that poses unique difficulties in language learning and perception that lead them to attend more to the fine-grained phonetic properties of signs, including phonologically irrelevant details, than do DE signers or, indeed, either of the native-English hearing groups. This picture is consistent with prior reports that DL signers make significantly more phonological errors in sign recall than do DE signers, who make more semantic errors (Mayberry & Fischer, 1989). In fact, there is a tendency for phonological errors to increase with the AoA of ASL (Mayberry & Eichen, 1991).…”

Segmentation of British Sign Language (BSL): Mind the gap!

“…Because 90-95% of Deaf children are born to hearing parents who do not sign, native-like language acquisition which results from early and consistent exposure to a language is not the norm. Previous work has demonstrated that age of exposure to sign language results in subtle but measurable differences in processing Corina & Hildebrandt, 2002;Mayberry & Fischer, 1989;Newman et al, 2002;Newport, 1990). During sentence recall and shadowing, for example, late learners of ASL produce a disproportionate number of phonological substitutions (i.e., signs that are phonologically similar to the target signs but differ in meaning) relative to native signers (Mayberry, Lock, & Kazmi, 2002).…”

A Look at the Other 90 Per Cent: Investigating British Sign Language Vocabulary Knowledge in Deaf Children from Different Language Learning Backgrounds

“…The significance of many of these factors has been well documented in the literature, specifically age of onset of deafness (Allen & Osborn, 1984;Marschark & Spencer, 2003), age and level of sign language exposure (Mayberry, 1993(Mayberry, , 1994Mayberry & Eichen, 1991;Mayberry & Fischer, 1989), parental hearing status (Erting, 1994;Mitchell & Karchmer, 2005;Morford & Mayberry, 2000;Moores, 2001;Padden & Humphries, 1988), and quality of language input (Singleton & Newport, 2004). Deaf children's language experiences vary considerably, ranging from deaf parents, who provide early access to language through sign to hearing parents who communicate exclusively through speech.…”