Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T20:34:11.029Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Word recognition in deaf readers: Cross-language activation of German Sign Language and German

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2014

OKAN KUBUS ,
AGNES VILLWOCK ,
JILL P. MORFORD  and
CHRISTIAN RATHMANN
OKAN KUBUS*
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg and NSF Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning
AGNES VILLWOCK
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg and NSF Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning
JILL P. MORFORD
Affiliation:
University of New Mexico and NSF Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning
CHRISTIAN RATHMANN
Affiliation:
University of Hamburg and NSF Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Okan Kubus, Institute for German Sign Language, University of Hamburg, Binderstrasse 34, Hamburg 20146, Germany. E-mail: okan.kubus@sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study addressed visual word recognition in deaf bilinguals who are proficient in German Sign Language (DGS) and German. The study specifically investigated whether DGS signs are activated during a monolingual German word recognition task despite the lack of similarity in German orthographic representations and DGS phonological representations. Deaf DGS–German bilinguals saw pairs of German words and decided whether the words were semantically related. Half of the experimental items had phonologically related translation equivalents in DGS. Participants were slower to reject semantically unrelated word pairs when the translation equivalents were phonologically related in DGS than when the DGS translations were phonologically unrelated. However, this was not the case in Turkish–German hearing bilinguals who do not have sign language knowledge. The results indicate that lexical representations are associated cross-linguistically in the bilingual lexicon irrespective of their orthographic or phonological form. Implications of these results for reading development in deaf German bilinguals are discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , July 2015 , pp. 831 - 854
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adesope, O. O., Lavin, T., Thompson, T., & Ungerleider, C. (2010). A systematic review and meta-analysis of the cognitive correlates of bilingualism. Review of Educational Research, 80, 207–245.Google Scholar
Becker, C., & von Meyenn, A. (2012). Phonologie: Der aufbau gebärdensprachlicher Zeichen. In Eichmann, H., Hansen, M., & Heßmann, J. (Eds.), Einführung in die Deutsche gebärdensprache (pp. 31–60). Hamburg: Signum.Google Scholar
Bialystok, E. (1988). Levels of bilingualism and levels of linguistic awareness. Developmental Psychology, 24, 560–567.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyes-Braem, P., & Rathmann, C. (2010). Transmission of sign language in Switzerland, Germany, and The Netherlands. In Brentari, D., (Ed.), Cambridge Language Surveys: Sign languages (pp. 19–24). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyes-Braem, P., & Sutton-Spence, R. (Eds.). (2001). The hands are the head of the mouth: The mouth as articulator in sign languages. Hamburg: Signum.Google Scholar
Brentari, D. (1998). A prosodic model of sign language phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Brentari, D. (2012). Phonology. In Pfau, R., Steinbach, M., & Woll, B. (Eds.), Sign language: An international handbook (pp. 21–54). Berlin: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Capek, C. M., Campbell, R., & Woll, B. (2008). The bimodal bilingual brain: fMRI investigations concerning the cortical distribution and differentiation of sign language and speechreading. Rivista Di Psicolinguistica Applicata, 8, 109–124.Google Scholar
Chamberlain, C., & Mayberry, R. I. (2008). ASL syntactic and narrative comprehension in skilled and less skilled adults readers: Bilingual–bimodal evidence for the linguistic basis of reading. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 537–549.Google Scholar
de Zeeuw, M., Verhoeven, L., & Schreuder, R. (2012). Morphological family size effects in young first and second language learners: Evidence of cross-language semantic activation in visual word recognition. Language Learning, 62, 68–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dijkstra, T. (2005). Bilingual visual word recognition and lexical access. In Kroll, J. F. & De Groot, A. M. B. (Eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches (pp. 179–201). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dijkstra, T., & van Heuven, W. J. B. (1998). The BIA model and bilingual word recognition. In Grainger, J. & Jacobs, A. (Eds.), Localist connectionist approaches to human cognition (pp. 189–225). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Dijkstra, T., & van Heuven, W. J. B. (2002). The architecture of the bilingual word recognition system: From identification to decision. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 5, 175–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ebbinghaus, H. (2012). Gebärdensprache und lautsprache im kontakt. In Eichmann, H., Hansen, M., & Heßmann, J. (Eds.), Einführung in die Deutsche gebärdensprache. Hamburg: Signum.Google Scholar
Ebbinghaus, H., & Heßmann, J. (1996). Signs and words: Accounting for spoken language elements in German sign language. International Review of Sign Linguistics, 1, 23–56.Google Scholar
Ebbinghaus, H., & Heßmann, J. (2001). Sign language as multidimensional communication: Why manual signs, mouthings, and mouth gestures are three different things. In Boyes-Braem, P. & Sutton-Spence, R. (Eds.), The hands are the head of the mouth: The mouth as articulator in sign languages (pp. 137–155). Hamburg: Signum.Google Scholar
Emmorey, K., & Corina, D. (1990). Lexical recognition in sign language: Effects of phonetic structure and morphology. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 71, 1227–1252.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernald, T. B., & Napoli, D. J. (2000). Exploitation of morphological possibilities in signed languages: Comparison of American Sign Language with English. Sign Language & Linguistics, 3, 3–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friesen, D. C., & Jared, D. (2012). Cross-language phonological activation of meaning: Evidence from category verification. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15, 145–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galambos, S. J., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (1990). The effects of learning two languages on levels of metalinguistic awareness. Cognition, 34, 1–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gesellschaft für Akademische Studienvorbereitung und Testentwicklung e. V., TestDaF-Institut (n.d.). What is the TestDaF? Retrieved November 28, 2008, from http://www.testdaf.de/teilnehmer/tn-info_sprache_detail.php?name=en Google Scholar
Grosjean, F. (1998). Studying bilinguals: Methodological and conceptual issues. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1 (2), 131–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grosjean, F. (2010). Bilingual: Life and reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guasch, M., Sánchez-Casas, R., Ferré, P., & García-Albea, J. E. (2011). Effects of the degree of meaning similarity on cross-language semantic priming in highly proficient bilinguals. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 23, 942–961.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Günther, K.-B., Wiechel, A., Thiel-Holtz, V., Staab, A., Schäfke, I., & Poppendieker, R. (2001). Unterricht mit gehörlosen Schülern (II). Abschlussbericht zum Hamburger Bilingualen Schulversuch. Hamburg: Verv. Ms.Google Scholar
Guo, T., Misra, M., Tam, J. W., & Kroll, J. F. (2012). On the time course of accessing meaning in a second language: An electrophysiological and behavioral investigation of translation recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 38, 1165–1186.Google Scholar
Hammill, D., Brown, V., Larsen, S., & Wiederholt, J. L. (1994). Test of adolescent and adult language (3rd ed.). Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.Google Scholar
Haptonstall-Nykaza, T. S., & Schick, B. (2007). The transition from fingerspelling to English print: Facilitating English decoding. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 12, 172–183.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hauser, P. C., Paludnevičienė, R., Supalla, T., & Bavelier, D. (2008). American Sign Language-Sentence Reproduction Test. In de Quadros, R. M. (Ed.), Sign languages: Spinning and unraveling the past, present and future. TISLR 9. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research Conference (pp. 160–172). Petrópolis/RJ, Brazil: Editora Arara Azul.Google Scholar
Hennies, J. (2006). Lesekompetenz und Schulleistungstests: Eine PISA-bezogene Lesestudie mit gehörlosen SchülerInnen des Hamburger Bilingualen Schulversuchs und schwerhörigen SchülerInnen zweier Vergleichsklassen. Das Zeichen, 20, 82–95.Google Scholar
Hildebrandt, U. C., & Corina, D. P. (2002). Phonological similarity in American Sign Language. Language and Cognitive Processes, 17, 593–612.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hohenberger, A., & Happ, D. (2001). The linguistic primacy of signs and mouth gestures over mouthing: Evidence from language production in German sign language (DGS). In Boyes-Braem, P. & Sutton-Spence, R. (Eds.), The hands are the head of the mouth: The mouth as articulator in sign languages (pp. 153–189). Hamburg: Signum.Google Scholar
Hohenberger, A., Happ, D., & Leuninger, H. (2002). Modality-dependent aspects of sign language production: Evidence from slips of the hands and their repairs in German sign language. In Meier, R. P., Cormier, K., & Quinto-Pozos, D., (Eds.), (Modality and structure in signed and spoken languages (pp. 112–142). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jared, D., & Kroll, J. F. (2001). Do bilinguals activate phonological representations in one or both of their languages when naming words? Journal of Memory and Language, 44, 2–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaushanskaya, M., & Marian, V. (2009). The bilingual advantage in novel word learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16, 705–710.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kim, S., Wang, M., & Ko, I. (2011). The processing of derivational morphology in Korean–English bilingual readers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14, 473–488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, A. (1995). Fingerspelling interaction: A set of deaf parents and their deaf daughter. In Lucas, C. (Ed.), Sociolinguistics in deaf communities (Vol. I). Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 62–73.Google Scholar
Kovelman, I., Baker, S. A., & Petitto, L. (2008). Age of first bilingual language exposure as a new window into bilingual reading development. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11, 203–223.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kroll, J. F., Bobb, S. C., & Wodniecka, Z. (2006). Language selectivity is the exception, not the rule: Arguments against a fixed locus of language selection in bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9, 119–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, J. F., Dussias, P. E., Bogulski, C. A., & Valdes-Kroff, J. (2012). Juggling two languages in one mind: What bilinguals tell us about language processing and its consequences for cognition. In Ross, B. (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (pp. 229–262). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kubus, O., Morford, J. P., & Rathmann, C. (2010, June). Effekte von Gebärdensprachkompetenz auf lexikalischen Zugriff von geschriebenen Wörtern: Ein Vergleich von ASL-Englisch und DGS-Deutsch zweisprachigen Personen. Paper presented at the SFB-IDGS Workshop, Hamburg.Google Scholar
Kubus, O., Morford, J. P., Rathmann, C., & Wilkinson, E. (2010, October). Effects and non-effects of sign language knowledge on written word recognition: A comparison of ASL–English and DGS–German bilingual adults. Paper presented at TISLR 10, West Layafette, IN.Google Scholar
Kubus, O., Rathmann, , Miller, C., Hauser, P., Spurgeon, P., Kargin, E., et al. (2012, March). The role of age of acquisition for deaf readers from a crosslinguistic perspective. Paper presented at the 34th Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), Frankfurt.Google Scholar
Kuntze, M. (2004). Literacy acquisition and deaf children: A study of the interaction of ASL and written English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Lane, H. (1984). When the mind hears: A history of the deaf. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Macizo, P., Herrera, A., Paolieri, D., & Román, P. (2010). Is there cross-language modulation when bilinguals process number words? Applied Psycholinguistics, 31, 651–669.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacSweeney, M., Waters, D., Brammer, M. J., Woll, B., & Goswami, U. (2008). Phonological processing in deaf signers and the impact of age of first language acquisition. NeuroImage, 40, 1369–1379.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marian, V., & Spivey, M. J. (2003). Competing activation in bilingual language processing: Within- and between-language competition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6, 97–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayberry, R. I., & Eichen, E. (1991). The long-lasting advantage of learning sign language in childhood: Another look at the critical period for language acquisition. Journal of Memory and Language, 30, 486–512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayberry, R. I., & Fischer, S. D. (1989). Looking through phonological shape to lexical meaning: The bottleneck of non-native sign language processing. Memory & Cognition, 17, 740–754.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meier, R. P., Cormier, K., & Quinto-Pozos, D. (2002). Modality and structure in signed and spoken languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, P., Kargin, T., Guldenoglu, B., Rathmann, C., Kubus, O., Hauser, P., et al. (2012). Factors distinguishing skilled and less skilled deaf readers: Evidence from four orthographies. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 17, 439–462.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morford, J. P., & Carlson, M. L. (2011). Sign perception and recognition in non-native signers of ASL. Language Learning & Development, 7, 149–168.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morford, J. P., Wilkinson, E., Villwock, A., Piñar, P., & Kroll, J. F. (2011). When deaf signers read English: Do written words activate their sign translations? Cognition, 118, 286–292.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ormel, E. (2008). Visual word recognition in bilingual deaf children. Doctoral dissertation, Radboud University, Nijmegen.Google Scholar
Ormel, E., Hermans, D., Knoors, H., & Verhoeven, L. (2012). Cross-language effects in visual word recognition: The case of bilingual deaf children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15, 288–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Padden, C. (2006). Learning to fingerspell twice: Young signing children's acquisition of fingerspelling. In Schick, B., Marscharck, M., & Spencer, P. E. (Eds.), Advances in the sign language development of deaf children (pp. 189–201). New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Padden, C., & Ramsey, C. (2000). American Sign Language and reading ability in deaf children. In Chamberlain, C., Morford, J. P., & Mayberry, R. I. (Eds.), Language acquisition by eye (pp. 165–189). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Papaspyrou, C., von Meyenn, A., Matthaei, M., & Herrmann, B. (2008). Grammatik der Deutschen gebärdensprache aus der sicht gehörloser fachleute. Hamburg: Signum.Google Scholar
Rathmann, C., & Kubus, O. (2014). German Sign Language Sentence Reproduction Test (DGS-SRT): Development, implementation and evaluation. Manuscript in preparation.Google Scholar
Sandler, W., & Lillo-Martin, D. (2006). Sign language and linguistic universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheele, A. F., Leseman, P. M., & Mayo, A. Y. (2010). The home language environment of monolingual and bilingual children and their language proficiency. Applied Psycholinguistics, 31, 117–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, W., Eschman, A., & Zuccolotto, A. (2002). E-Prime user's guide. Pittsburgh, PA: Psychology Software Tools.Google Scholar
Weisberg, J., Petrich, J., McCullough, S., & Emmorey, K. (2011, June). The neural link between fingerspelled and printed words for deaf signers. Poster presented at the Human Brain Mapping meeting, Quebec City.Google Scholar
Wilbur, R. (2011). Sign syllables. In van Oostendorp, M., Ewen, C. J., Hume, E., & Rice, K. (Eds.), The Blackwell companion to phonology (pp. 1309–1334). Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wu, Y., & Thierry, G. (2010). Chinese–English bilinguals reading English hear Chinese. Journal Of Neuroscience, 30, 7646–7651.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yow, W., & Markman, E. M. (2011). Young bilingual children's heightened sensitivity to referential cues. Journal of Cognition and Development, 12, 12–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar