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Investigating sensitivity to American Sign Language phonological structure in adult hearing second language learners: an ERP study
Poster Session B, Friday, September 12, 4:30 - 6:00 pm, Field House
Sarah Kimbley1, Katherine Midgley1, Gabriela Meade2, Phillip Holcomb1, Karen Emmorey1; 1SDSU, 2Mayo Clinic
Sign languages like ASL exhibit phonological properties parallel to—but not identical with—spoken languages, including formational units such as handshape and location. Previous ERP studies demonstrate deaf early signers are sensitive to these sublexical properties, as evidenced by phonological priming ERP effects (Meade et al., 2018; 2022). In contrast, hearing non-signers do not exhibit such effects (Meade et al., 2022). Here, we investigated whether sensitivity to phonological structure develops in hearing adults after learning a small ASL vocabulary. We used ERPs to track neural changes in hearing adults, comparing their pre- and post-learning ERP responses with those of deaf signers. Deaf signers and hearing learners viewed prime-target pairs in which the prime was always a pseudosign and the target was always a real sign. The pseudosign prime either shared the same handshape or location as the target sign (related pairs) or was phonologically unrelated to the target. All signs had low iconicity and transparency ratings. Participants performed a go/no-go repetition detection task, pressing a button to an occasional repeated pseudosign pair. ERPs were recorded pre- and post-learning for the hearing participants who learned 92 signs across two sessions. Thus far, 6 deaf signers and 5 hearing learners have participated (data collection is ongoing; target n=25 per group). If sensitivity to phonological structure develops rapidly, then we predict that hearing learners would show no effects in the N400 window prior to learning (replicating Meade et al., 2022) but would show post-learning negativities for unrelated versus related primes after learning. If priming effects are only observed in deaf signers, it would suggest that either early exposure or a larger lexicon is necessary for developing phonological categories. Hearing learners were able to successfully learn the non-iconic signs (85% correct ASL productions, given the English translations). Prior to learning, hearing non-signers showed no N400 priming effects for handshape, but they showed “reversed” priming for location pairs (larger negativity for related than unrelated pairs), indicating interference, rather than facilitation. After learning, hearing non-signers began to show priming effects for handshape (greater negativity for unrelated than related pairs), and they continued to show reversed priming for location. Deaf signers showed robust N400 priming for handshape (reduced negativity for related pairs), reflecting established phonological processing. However, they also showed evidence of reversed priming for location. Previous research has attributed reversed priming for location to lexical competition. However, our finding that hearing non-signers exhibited reversed priming prior to learning, suggests that perceptual, rather than lexical factors may be at play. Taken together, preliminary results support the hypothesis that ASL learning leads to sensitivity to handshape as a linguistic unit, making sublexical units available for processing. The pattern for location post-learning appears different from handshape, hinting at developing parameter-specific processing akin to that observed in signers.
Topic Areas: Signed Language and Gesture, Phonology