Can sign language make you better at hand processing?

The languages developed by deaf communities are unique for using visual signs produced by the hand. In the present study, we explored the cognitive effects of employing the hand as articulator. We focused on the arbitrariness of the form-meaning relationship\u2014a fundamental feature of natural languages\u2014and asked whether sign languages change the processing of arbitrary non-linguistic stimulus-response (S-R) associations involving the hand. This was tested using the Simon effect, which specifically requires such type of associations. Differences between signers and speakers (non-signers) only appeared in the Simon task when hand stimuli were shown. Response-time analyses revealed that the distinctiveness of signers\u2019 responses derived from an increased ability to process memory traces of arbitrary S-R pairs related to the hand. These results shed light on the interplay between language and cognition as well as on the effects of sign language acquisition

Distributional analyses in the picture-word interference paradigm: Exploring the semantic interference and the distractor frequency effects.

he present study explores the distributional features of two important effects within the picture-word interference paradigm: the semantic interference and the distractor frequency effects. These two effects display different and specific distributional profiles. Semantic interference appears greatly reduced in faster response times, while it reaches its full magnitude only in slower responses. This can be interpreted as a sign of fluctuant attentional efficiency in resolving response conflict. In contrast, the distractor frequency effect is mediated mainly by a distributional shift, with low frequency distractors uniformly shifting reaction times distribution towards a slower range of latencies. This finding fits with the idea that distractor frequency exerts its effect by modulating the point in time in which operations required to discard the distractor can start. Taken together, these results are congruent with current theoretical accounts of both the semantic interference and distractor frequency effects. Critically, distributional analyses highlight and further describe the different cognitive dynamics underlying these two effects, suggesting that this analytical tool is able to offer important insights about lexical access during speech productio

The Manipulability Effect in Object Naming

Seeing objects triggers activation of motor areas. The implications of this motor activation in tasks that do not require object-use is still a matter of debate in cognitive sciences. Here we test whether motor activation percolates into the linguistic system by exploring the effect of object manipulability in a speech production task. Italian native speakers name the set of photographs provided by Gu\ue9rard, Lagac\ue8 and Brodeur (Beh Res Meth, 2015). Photographs varied on four motor dimensions concerning on how easily the represented objects can be grasped, moved, or pantomimed, and the number of actions that can be performed with them. The results show classical psycholinguistic phenomena such as the effect of age of acquisition and name agreement in naming latencies. Critically, linear mixed-effects models show an effect of three motor predictors over and above the psycholinguistic effects (replicating, in part, previous findings, Gu\ue9rard et al., 2015). Further research is needed to address how, and at which level, the manipulability effect emerges in the course of word production

Asymmetric switch costs in numeral naming and number word reading: Implications for models of bilingual language production

One approach used to gain insight into the processes underlying bilingual language comprehension and production examines the costs that arise from switching languages. For unbalanced bilinguals, asymmetric switch costs are reported in speech production, where the switch cost for Ll is larger than the switch cost for L2, whereas, symmetric switch costs are reported in language comprehension tasks, where the cost of switching is the same for L1 and L2. Presently, it is unclear why asymmetric switch costs are observed in speech production, but not in language comprehension. Three experiments are reported that simultaneously examine methodological explanations of task related differences in the switch cost asymmetry and the predictions of three accounts of the switch cost asymmetry in speech production. The results of these experiments suggest that (1) the type of language task (comprehension vs. production) determines whether an asymmetric switch cost is observed and (2) at least some of the switch cost asymmetry arises within the language system

The iconicity advantage in sign production: The case of bimodal bilinguals

Recent evidence demonstrates that pictures corresponding to iconic signs are named faster than pictures corresponding to non-iconic signs. The present study investigates the locus of the iconicity advantage in hearing bimodal bilinguals. A naming experiment with iconic and noniconic pictures in Italian Sign Language (LIS) was conducted. Bimodal bilinguals named the pictures either using a noun construction that involved the production of the sign corresponding to the picture or using a marked demonstrative pronoun construction replacing the picture sign. In this last condition, the pictures were colored and participants were instructed to name the pronoun together with the color. The iconicity advantage was reliable in the noun utterance but not in the marked demonstrative pronoun utterance. In a third condition, the colored pictures were presented as distractor stimuli and participants required to name the color. In this last condition, distractor pictures with iconic signs elicited faster naming latencies than non-iconic signs. The results suggest that the advantage of iconic signs in production arises at the level of semantic-tophonological links. In addition, we conclude that bimodal bilinguals and native signers do not differ in terms of the activation flow within the sign production system

The developmental trend of transposed letters effects in masked priming

In the current study, we investigated the development of trans- posed letter (TL) priming effects with masked priming. Recent studies have reported different and contrasting results concerning the age at which TL priming effects first appear and whether they tend to decline or increase with age. One of the aims of this study was to investigate the developmental trend of orthographic mech- anisms underlying the TL effects in Italian. We tested three groups of children (second, third, and fifth graders) and a group of adults with a sandwich masked priming procedure, presenting lists of tar- get words preceded by TL or replaced letter (RL) primes. TLs and RLs were either at the beginning (second\u2013third letters) or the end (fourth\u2013sixth letters) of primes in order to see whether the TL priming effect varied according to position in the letter string. We found that TL priming effects increased with age in both accu- racy and latency. No effect of position was found. The results are discussed in light of a possible difference in the development of orthographic mechanisms depending on the transparency of the language

Effects of animacy on the processing of morphological Number: a cognitive inheritance?

Language encodes into morphology part of the information present in the referential world. Some features are marked in the great majority of languages, such as the numerosity of the referents that is encoded in morphological Number. Other features do not surface as frequently in morphological markings, yet they are pervasive in natural languages. This is the case of animacy, that can ground Gender systems as well as constrain the surfacing of Number. The diffusion of numerosity and animacy could mirror their biological salience at the extra-linguistic cognitive level. Human extra-linguistic numerical abilities are phylogenetically ancient and are observed in non-human animal species, especially when counting salient animate entities such as social companions. Does the saliency of animacy influence the morphological encoding of Number in language processing? We designed an experiment to test the encoding of morphological Number in language processing in relation to animacy. In Italian, Gender and Number are mandatorily expressed in a fusional morpheme. In some nouns denoting animate referents, Gender encodes the sex of referents and is semantically interpretable. In some other animate nouns and in inanimate nouns, Gender is uninterpretable at the semantic level. We found that it is easier to inflect for Number nouns when the inflectional morpheme is interpretable with respect to a semantic feature related to animacy. We discuss the possibility that the primacy of animacy in counting is mirrored in morphological processing and that morphology is designed to easily express information that is salient from a cognitive point of view

Activation Cascading in Sign Production

In this study, we investigated how activation unfolds in sign production by examining whether signs that are not produced have their representations activated by semantics (cascading of activation). Deaf signers were tested with a picture-picture interference task. Participants were presented with pairs of overlapping pictures and named the green picture (target) while ignoring the red picture (distractor). In Experiment 1 we varied whether target and distractor pictures had similar signs. Signs were produced faster with sign-related picture pairs compared to unrelated picture pairs. The facilitation observed with sign-related pairs replicates the 1 obtained in speaking with sound-related pairs (e.g., bed-bell), a finding cited in support of cascading of activation. In Experiments 2A and 2B we focused on sign iconicity, anticipating that cascading of activation would lead to a facilitatory effect of iconicity. Consistent with this prediction, picture distractors with iconic signs induced faster responses. Furthermore, in Experiment 3, facilitation was found for iconic signs in picture naming. Altogether, our results reveal that cascading of activation is a fundamental aspect of language processing that is at play not only in speaking, but also in signing. Our results also help to define which signs are activated in sign production. (PsycINFO Database Record)

Hands show where things are: The close similarity between sign and natural space

Many of the signs produced across sign languages are iconic, in the sense that they resemble the concepts they represent. We examined whether location, one of basic sign parameters along with handshape and movement, is systematically used for purposes of iconicity. Our findings revealed a mapping of vertical sign space that is exploited in its entirety for encoding typical locations in natural space. In all of the twenty sign languages we analyzed, signs were more likely to have high locations with concepts typically occurring in high vs. low regions of natural space (e.g., cloud vs. root). Furthermore, the height of signs produced to identify a visual object varied depending on object position (e.g., it was higher for basketball in the basket than basketball on the floor). It thus appears that signing space is permeable to semantic and episodic features, and iconicity plays a crucial role in making signing space so adaptable

One can be some but some cannot be one: ERP correlates of numerosity incongruence are different for singular and plural

Humans can communicate information on numerosity by means of number words (e.g., one hundred, a couple), but also through Number morphology (e.g., through the singular vs the plural forms of a noun). Agreement violations involving Number morphology (e.g., *one apples) are well known to elicit specific ERP components such as the Left Anterior Negativity (LAN); yet, the relationship between a morphological Number value (e.g., singular vs plural) and its referential numerosity has rarely been considered in the literature. Moreover, even if agreement violations have been proven to be very useful, they do not typically characterise everyday language usage, thus narrowing the scope of the results. In this study we investigated Number morphology from a different perspective, by focusing on the ERP correlates of congruence and incongruence between a depicted numerosity and noun phrases. To this aim we designed a picture\u2013phrase matching paradigm in Italian. In each trial, a picture depicting one or four objects was followed by a grammatically well-formed phrase made up of a quantifier and a content noun inflected either in the singular or in the plural. When analysing ERP time-locked to the content noun, plural phrases after pictures presenting one object elicited a larger negativity, similar to a LAN effect. No significant congruence effect was found in the case of the phrases whose morphological Number value conveyed a numerosity of one. Our results suggest that: 1) incongruence elicits a LAN-like negativity independently from the grammaticality of the utterances and irrespectively of the P600 component; 2) the reference to a numerosity can be partially encoded in an incremental way when processing Number morphology; and, most importantly, 3) the processing of the morphological Number value of plural is different from that of singular as the former shows a narrower interpretability than the latter