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1. The effects of multiple linguistic variables on picture naming in American Sign Language

   https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01751-x  

   Sehyr, Zed Sevcikova; Emmorey, Karen (December 2021, Behavior Research Methods)

   Picture-naming tasks provide critical data for theories of lexical representation and retrieval and have been performed successfully in sign languages. However, the specific influences of lexical or phonological factors and stimulus properties on sign retrieval are poorly understood. To examine lexical retrieval in American Sign Language (ASL), we conducted a timed picture-naming study using 524 pictures (272 objects and 251 actions). We also compared ASL naming with previous data for spoken English for a subset of 425 pictures. Deaf ASL signers named object pictures faster and more consistently than action pictures, as previously reported for English speakers. Lexical frequency, iconicity, better name agreement, and lower phonological complexity each facilitated naming reaction times (RT)s. RTs were also faster for pictures named with shorter signs (measured by average response duration). Target name agreement was higher for pictures with more iconic and shorter ASL names. The visual complexity of pictures slowed RTs and decreased target name agreement. RTs and target name agreement were correlated for ASL and English, but agreement was lower for ASL, possibly due to the English bias of the pictures. RTs were faster for ASL, which we attributed to a smaller lexicon. Overall, the results suggest that models of lexical retrieval developed for spoken languages can be adopted for signed languages, with the exception that iconicity should be included as a factor. The open-source picture-naming data set for ASL serves as an important, first-of-its-kind resource for researchers, educators, or clinicians for a variety of research, instructional, or assessment purposes. 

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2. The Effect of Iconicity on Weak Hand Drop in American Sign Language

   https://doi.org/10.3765/amp.v9i0.5305  

   Becker, Amelia Ann (August 2022, Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology)

   The research community generally accepts that signed and spoken languages contain both iconicity and arbitrariness. Iconicity's impact on statistical distributions of motivated forms throughout signed language lexicons is clear (e.g. Occhino, 2016). However, there has been little work to determine whether the iconic links between form and meaning are relevant only to a sign's initial formation, or if these links are stored as part of lexical representations. In the present study, 40 Deaf signers of American Sign Language were asked to rate two-handed signs in their citation form and in one-handed (reduced) forms. Twelve signs were highly iconic. For each of these highly iconic sign, a less iconic but phonologically similar sign of the same grammatical category was also chosen. Signs were presented in carrier sentences and in isolation. Participants preferred one-handed forms of the highly iconic signs over one-handed forms of their phonolgogically similar but less iconic counterparts. Thus, iconicity impacted the application of a synchronic phonological process. This finding suggests that lexical representations retain iconic form-meaning links and that these links are accessible to the phonological grammar. 

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3. The Sem-Lex Benchmark: Modeling ASL Signs and their Phonemes

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3597638.3608408  

   Kezar, Lee; Thomason, Jesse; Caselli, Naomi; Sehyr, Zed; Pontecorvo, Elana (October 2023, ASSETS: ACM SIGACCESS Conference On Computers And Accessibility)

   Sign language recognition and translation technologies have the potential to increase access and inclusion of deaf signing communities, but research progress is bottlenecked by a lack of representative data. We introduce a new resource for American Sign Language (ASL) modeling, the Sem-Lex Benchmark. The Benchmark is the current largest of its kind, consisting of over 84k videos of isolated sign productions from deaf ASL signers who gave informed consent and received compensation. Human experts aligned these videos with other sign language resources including ASL-LEX, SignBank, and ASL Citizen, enabling useful expansions for sign and phonological feature recognition. We present a suite of experiments which make use of the linguistic information in ASL-LEX, evaluating the practicality and fairness of the Sem-Lex Benchmark for isolated sign recognition (ISR). We use an SL-GCN model to show that the phonological features are recognizable with 85% accuracy, and that they are effective as an auxiliary target to ISR. Learning to recognize phonological features alongside gloss results in a 6% improvement for few-shot ISR accuracy and a 2% improvement for ISR accuracy overall. Instructions for downloading the data can be found at https://github.com/leekezar/SemLex. 

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4. Production of real signs but not pseudosigns affected by age of acquisition in American Sign Language

   https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-024-01656-y  

   Lynne_Nielson, Shai; Mayberry, Rachel I (January 2025, Memory & Cognition)

   Research shows that insufficient language access in early childhood significantly affects language processing. While the majority of this work focuses on syntax, phonology also appears to be affected, though it is unclear exactly how. Here we investigated phonological production across age of acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL). Participants were deaf adult signers who first learned ASL at ages ranging from birth to 14 years and they performed both lexical decisions and repetitions of ASL signs and pseudosigns. Because phonological production has been understudied across age of acquisition, we were particularly interested in production accuracy for the sublexical phonological parameters of handshape, movement, and location. Lexical decision responses were slower and more accurate for impossible pseudosigns compared with possible pseudosigns, indicating participants were sensitive to ASL phonological structure regardless of age of acquisition. Despite this, age of acquisition affected repetition accuracy. Handshape errors were highest for those with earlier ages of acquisition, but movement errors were highest for those with later ages of acquisition, though this effect of age of acquisition was only seen for real ASL signs and not pseudosigns. The parameter error pattern for pseudosigns was not affected by age of acquisition. These results indicate that later age of acquisition does not inhibit the ability to produce ASL phonology but ultimately alters the processing of the phonological parameters when meaning and phonology are integrated. 

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5. Contribution of Lexical Quality and Sign Language Variables to Reading Comprehension

   https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enac018  

   Sehyr, Zed Sevcikova; Emmorey, Karen (July 2022, The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education)

   Abstract The lexical quality hypothesis proposes that the quality of phonological, orthographic, and semantic representations impacts reading comprehension. In Study 1, we evaluated the contributions of lexical quality to reading comprehension in 97 deaf and 98 hearing adults matched for reading ability. While phonological awareness was a strong predictor for hearing readers, for deaf readers, orthographic precision and semantic knowledge, not phonology, predicted reading comprehension (assessed by two different tests). For deaf readers, the architecture of the reading system adapts by shifting reliance from (coarse-grained) phonological representations to high-quality orthographic and semantic representations. In Study 2, we examined the contribution of American Sign Language (ASL) variables to reading comprehension in 83 deaf adults. Fingerspelling (FS) and ASL comprehension skills predicted reading comprehension. We suggest that FS might reinforce orthographic-to-semantic mappings and that sign language comprehension may serve as a linguistic basis for the development of skilled reading in deaf signers. 

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