LSE-Sign: A lexical database for Spanish Sign Language

Abstract

The LSE-Sign database is a free online tool for selecting Spanish Sign Language stimulus materials to be used in experiments. It contains 2,400 individual signs taken from a recent standardized LSE dictionary, and a further 2,700 related nonsigns. Each entry is coded for a wide range of grammatical, phonological, and articulatory information, including handshape, location, movement, and non-manual elements. The database is accessible via a graphically based search facility which is highly flexible both in terms of the search options available and the way the results are displayed. LSE-Sign is available at the following website: http://www. bcbl.eu/databases/lse/.Keywords Sign language . Lexical database . Spanish Sign Language (LSE lengua de signos española) . Stimulus material Psycholinguistic research on sign language has traditionally focused on investigating whether spoken and sign language processing are governed by similar or different cognitive mechanisms and underpinned by similar or different neuroanatomical substrates. Studies have looked into various aspects of processing in signed languages and these findings so far have shown that lexical access in signed languages is broadly affected by similar features to those in spoken languages (for an overview see Carreiras, 2010). Previous work has confirmed the fundamental distinction between form and meaning through Btip of the finger^experiences (Thompson, Emmorey, & Gollan, 2005), the role of morphological complexity (Emmorey & Corina, 1990) and of phonological parameters (Gutiérrez, Müller, Baus, & Carreiras, 2012), semantic interference effects (Baus, Gutiérrez-Sigut, Quer, & Carreiras, 2008), familiarity and phonological neighborhood (Carreiras, Gutiér-rez-Sigut, Baquero, & Corina, 2008), and cross-language interactions in bimodal bilinguals (Kubus, Villwock, Morford, & Rathmann, 2014;Morford, Kroll, Piñar, & Wilkinson, 2014;Morford, Wilkinson, Villwock, Piñar, & Kroll, 2011).While many of these findings provide parallels for what is already known about spoken languages, results that are puzzling, inconclusive or contradictory to previous findings have also been found. For instance, priming studies with sign languages have shown the expected facilitatory effect of a semantic relation (Mayberry & Witcher 2005) but not always clear effects of the phonological parameters. Phonological parameters (location, handshape, and movement) influence sign recognition in a different manner, with some parameters showing an inhibitory effect and others showing facilitation Gutierrez, Williams, Grosvald, & Corina, 2012; see also Caselli & Cohen-Goldberg, 2014, for a computational model). Furthermore, results are not consistent: for example, some studies have found location to have an inhibitory effect on lexical retrieval (Corina & Hildebrandt, 2002;Carreiras et al., 2008), while other studies have found a facilitatory effect of location combined with movement (Baus, Gutiérrez & Carreiras, 2014;Dye & Shih, 2006 results that are inconclusive or do not sit well...

Language lateralization of hearing native signers: A functional transcranial Doppler sonography (fTCD) study of speech and sign production

“…One possibility is that some of the non-signers treated the non-sign repetition as a visuospatial receptive task, increasing the involvement of the right hemisphere, as has been shown in previous fTCD studies of visuo-spatial processing (e.g., Payne et al, 2015; Rosch, Bishop, & Badcock, 2012; Whitehouse, Badcock, Groen, & Bishop, 2009). Another possible explanation for the variability within the non-signing group is that, although the non-signs used in the current study had been rated as non-iconic (Gutierrez-Sigut, Costello, et al, 2015) and the instructions emphasized that they had no meaning, it is possible that some participants sought meaning in the signs, and therefore increased the involvement of the left hemisphere. Finally, it is possible that the fTCD signal was weaker in some of the non-signers because they were performing a repetition task rather than the generation task performed by signers.…”

“…One hundred non-sign video clips were chosen from LSE-Sign: a lexical database for Spanish Sign Language (Gutierrez-Sigut, Costello, Baus, & Carreiras, 2015). Video clips for non-signs in this database were recorded by varying one phonological parameter from an existing Spanish sign language sign.…”

“…The selected non-signs contained highly perceivable handshapes and maintained the variability and complexity of locations and movements found in real signs. In order to further remove the linguistic component, and therefore ensure that the stimuli would not have any meaning for non-signers, the selected non-signs had been previously rated as non-iconic by signers of LSE (see Gutierrez-Sigut, Costello, et al, 2015 for further details). Videos were short clips of non-signs produced in a carrier sentence.…”

“…Videos were short clips of non-signs produced in a carrier sentence. They were edited to start and finish in the first and last hold of the item (see Gutierrez-Sigut, Costello, et al, 2015). A mixture of 2-handed and 1-handed signs were presented.…”

Spoken Language Activation Alters Subsequent Sign Language Activation in L2 Learners of American Sign Language

“…Phonological information for hand orientation and movement were omitted. Phonological features such as handshape and location were coded based on the Prosodic Model (Brentari 1998) and similar types of coding can be found in larger corpora of sign languages (e.g., Gutierrez-Sigut et al 2015).…”