Motor-iconicity of sign language does not alter the neural systems underlying tool and action naming

Emmorey, Karen; Grabowski, Thomas J.; McCullough, Stephen; Damasio, H.; Ponto, Laura L. Boles; Hichwa, Richard D.; Bellugi, Ursula

doi:10.1016/s0093-934x(03)00309-2

Cited by 68 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Many neuroimaging studies find the Perisylvian language network (comprising of left frontal and temporal areas) that is known to be activated when hearing participants process language, also activated when deaf signers watch American or British sign language (abbreviated ASL and BSL, respectively) (Levanen, Uutela, Salenius, & Hari, 2001;MacSweeney et al, 2004MacSweeney et al, , 2006Newman, Bavelier, Corina, Jezzard, & Neville, 2002, 1998. Although this suggests strong similarities between neural correlates of spoken and signed language, differences have been found as well, particularly with respect to the stronger involvement of parietal cortex (Emmorey et al, 2004(Emmorey et al, , 2005MacSweeney et al, , 2004 as well as of the right hemisphere in signers (Neville et al, 1998;Newman et al, 2002).…”

Section: Sign Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…supramarginal gyrus) activation in users of sign language is a specific activation to signs and not to non-linguistic hand movements. Emmorey and colleagues were also interested in the action properties of sign language (Emmorey et al, 2004). They made use of the fact that signs in ASL of tools and actions performed with a tool, have a high degree of iconicity.…”

Section: Sign Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

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Neural evidence for the interplay between language, gesture, and action: A review

2007

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Co-speech gestures embody a form of manual action that is tightly coupled to the language system. As such, the co-occurrence of speech and co-speech gestures is an excellent example of the interplay between language and action. There are, however, other ways in which language and action can be thought of as closely related. In this paper we will give an overview of studies in cognitive neuroscience that examine the neural underpinnings of links between language and action. Topics include neurocognitive studies of motor representations of speech sounds, action-related language, sign language and co-speech gestures. It will be concluded that there is strong evidence on the interaction between speech and gestures in the brain. This interaction however shares general properties with other domains in which there is interplay between language and action.

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Section: Sign Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sign Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Neural evidence for the interplay between language, gesture, and action: A review

2007

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“…That is, they show a dissociation between signed language (impaired) and gesture (unimpaired). Imaging studies, too, suggest that iconicity fails to influence the cortical regions activated in the production of signed language (see Emmorey et al [2004] and San Jose-Robertson et al [2004] for further discussion of the role of iconicity in signed language production).…”

Section: Sign Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sign Language and the Brain: A Review

Campbell¹,

MacSweeney²,

Waters³

2007

Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education

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How are signed languages processed by the brain? This review briefly outlines some basic principles of brain structure and function and the methodological principles and techniques that have been used to investigate this question. We then summarize a number of different studies exploring brain activity associated with sign language processing especially as compared to speech processing. We focus on lateralization: is signed language lateralized to the left hemisphere (LH) of native signers, just as spoken language is lateralized to the LH of native speakers, or could sign processing involve the right hemisphere to a greater extent than speech processing? Experiments that have addressed this question are described, and some problems in obtaining a clear answer are outlined.In order to understand how the brain processes signed language, we need a reasonable road map of the brainits general structure and the probable functions of different regions. The study of brain injury (lesions) has provided a well-established methodology for inferring relations of structure and function in the brain. The consequences of brain lesions depend on which part of the brain is damaged. For example, a person with damage to the front of the left side of the brain might be unable to speak. However, someone else, with damage to the back of the right side of the brain, might be able to produce structured language utterances but may have lost some spatial abilities and be unable to see more than one thing at a time. Patterns like this appear to be highly systematic over many individual patients. One straightforward inference is that, in most people, the front of the left side of the brain is required for producing language, whereas the back of the right half of the brain is needed for visuospatial processing. That is, these two functions are ''localized'' and cannot be readily undertaken by other regions. Since the mid-19 century, the likely relationships between particular brain regions and their functions have been inferred from descriptions of such systematic patterns of individual brain injuries. Such research has provided a basic map of the brain upon which subsequent research has built. A Tour of the BrainAs in all vertebrates, the human brain consists of two near-identical hemispheres, reflected on each other. The gray cortex (cortex 5 crust in Latin) comprises minute and densely packed nerve cells, to a depth of 0.5-1 cm. The corded band that connects the two hemispheres comprises many tightly bunched white fibers. Such fibers can also be seen beneath the cortex and run out to the spinal cord. These are bundles of individual nerve axons that carry information between nerve cells. Long axon fibers are organized in bundles (Latin-fasces/fasciculi), like cables that carry electricity, TV, or telephone information under urban roads. The glossy white protective sheath of myelin insulatesWe are grateful to two anonymous reviewers and Cheryl Capek for their comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. We thank Adam Schembri for sugges...

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“…They also sketched how many signs appear to lose some of their iconicity as they mature, for example because their form is slightly changed to conform to the phonological categories of a language or because the action they denote is no longer a part of normal, everyday culture. Some findings even seem to show that iconicity does not play an important or active role in the perception of iconic signs (Siple et al 1982;Newport & Meier 1985) or in their production (Marshall et al 2004;Emmorey et al 2004) at all. However, the current findings are an indication that, at least when signers have to make acceptability judgments of highly variable sign manipulations, iconicity does play a role.…”

Section: Iconicity: Only When Necessary?mentioning

confidence: 93%

“…If one regards iconicity as a fairly complex strategy to interpret the meaning of signs, it might then be reasonable to expect that iconicity only plays a role if a straightforward symbolic interpretation is not possible or does not suffice, for example, if one has to judge the acceptability of a sign manipulation or if one sees an unknown sign or gesture. Perhaps in the studies by Siple et al (1982), Newport & Meier (1985), Marshall et al (2004), and Emmorey et al (2004) people did not have to rely on iconicity even though they were dealing with iconic signs. There are several indications that seeing iconicity is indeed a fairly complex matter and not something that necessarily occurs whenever you look at an iconic sign.…”

Section: Iconicity: Only When Necessary?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Acceptability of sign manipulations

Arendsen

Doorn

Riddera³

2010

SL&L

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This study contains the results of an experiment in which signers were asked to judge the acceptability of a set of sign manipulations. Signs were recorded with variations in different categories, in the temporal and spatial dimension. Participants varied much in tolerance, i.e. in the percentage of movies they judged to be acceptable, but their rankings of the acceptability of sign manipulations correlated well. On the level of dimensionality, we found that temporal manipulations were highly acceptable while spatial (and spatiotemporal) manipulations were often judged unacceptable. Further division of the manipulations into categories, such as changes in hand orientation or movement direction, showed much variability and little regularity. The roles of phonology and iconicity in acceptability judgments were studied. Part of the variability in the acceptability of sign manipulations could be explained on the basis of the type of phonological error caused by each manipulation, and by considering a sign's iconicity and classifying whether manipulations are compatible or incompatible with that iconicity. Finally, human judgments were compared to acceptability ratings by three automatic sign recognizers for three of the signs. With some exceptions, the rankings of the acceptability of sign manipulations as calculated by these sign recognizers did not correlate well with the rankings by humans.

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Motor-iconicity of sign language does not alter the neural systems underlying tool and action naming

Cited by 68 publications

References 33 publications

Neural evidence for the interplay between language, gesture, and action: A review

Neural evidence for the interplay between language, gesture, and action: A review

Sign Language and the Brain: A Review

Acceptability of sign manipulations

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