Cross-linguistic Interactions Across Modalities: Effects of the Oral Language on Sign Production

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to explore cross-linguistic interactions in language production when the language to be produced and the non-intended language are from different modalities. Concretely, we tested whether Deaf bimodal bilinguals are sensitive to oral language influences when they sign. To that end, 25 Deaf Catalan Sign Language (LSC)-Spanish bilinguals named pictures in LSC while ignoring either written distractor words in Spanish (picture-word interference) or distractor pictures (picture-picture interference). Cross-linguistic interactions were explored by means of behavioural and electrophysiological measures from three categories of distractors: semantically related, phonologically related in the oral language or unrelated to the target picture. No semantic effects were observed in sign latencies, but ERPs differed between semantically related and unrelated distractors. Considering the phonological manipulation, phono-translation facilitation was observed both behaviourally and at the ERPs level. Importantly, these effects were not determined by the modality in which distractors were presented. The present results reveal that oral language interacts with sign language production, even when there is no explicit presence of the oral language in the task. Implications for models of cross-linguistic interactions in bilingual language production are discussed.

Iconicity in sign language production: Task matters

“…Contrastingly, in the word-to-sign translation task, because both language modalities are involved in the task (one in the input and the other in the output), the N400 ERP frequency effect could be reflecting the impact of word frequency, sign frequency or the parallel activation of both modalities (Gimeno-Martínez et al, 2021;Lee et al, 2019). Although the present data do not allow determining the modality of processing reflected in the N400 time-range, two data points appear to suggest that effects in the word-to-sign translation are reflecting the processing of words.…”

Iconicity in Sign Language Production: Task Matters

“…One possibility is that the latency of the ERP frequency effect is modulated by how much the task emphasizes the oral modality, either by the response required (speak or sign) or by the stimuli employed (written words or pictures). Although oral languages are also active when the task is restricted to sign languages (Gimeno-Martínez et al, 2020;Lee et al, 2019), it is plausible that the picture naming task in the sign modality does not activate lexical representations of the oral modality as the word-to-sign translation task does. In Baus and Costa (2015), using the picture naming task, frequency effects were delayed when hearing signers were required to sign (Experiment 1) relative to when they were required to speak (Experiment 2).…”