Picture-naming in American Sign Language: an electrophysiological study of the effects of iconicity and structured alignment

McGarry, Meghan E.; Mott, Megan; Midgley, Katherine J.; Holcomb, Phillip J.; Emmorey, Karen

doi:10.1080/23273798.2020.1804601

Cited by 9 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Sign iconicity was a robust predictor of ASL naming times and target name agreement and was associated with improved naming consistency, particularly for action pictures. These results align with previous picture naming studies that specifically contrasted highly iconic and non-iconic signs (Baus & Costa, 2015;McGarry et al, 2020;Navarrette et al, 2017) and replicate the regression results with BSL picture naming by Vinson et al (2015). Thus, the facilitatory effect of iconicity on lexical retrieval appears to be general and can be observed even in a large dataset in which pictures were not preselected for a significant discrepancy in iconicity.…”

Section: Iconicitysupporting

confidence: 89%

“…Supporting this hypothesis, Thompson et al (2009) found that picture-sign matching decisions were faster when the phonological form of the iconic sign was aligned with the picture (e.g., a picture of a bird with a prominent beak aligns with the ASL sign BIRD which depicts a bird's beak) compared to non-aligned pictures (e.g., a bird in flight). Similarly, McGarry et al (2020) found that pictures that aligned with the iconic sign were named faster than non-aligned pictures and exhibited a reduced N400 component, indicative of facilitation. Thus, pictures that correspond with iconic target signs may be more likely to visually prime the phonological form of the sign, leading to faster picture naming latencies.…”

Section: Iconicitymentioning

confidence: 81%

“…Support for this hypothesis was reported in a recent ERP study of picture naming in ASL. McGarry et al (2020) found that the N400 response (an ERP component sensitive to lexicalsemantic processing) was modulated by iconicity in a manner that paralleled the effect of concreteness: pictures named with iconic signs elicited a larger N400 response (greater negativity) than non-iconic signs. Concrete words also elicit a larger N400 amplitude than abstract words (e.g., Barber et al, 2013;Holcomb et al, 1999).…”

Section: Iconicitymentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Iconic signs often depict perceptual semantic features, for example, distinctive body parts of animals, such as the trunk of an elephant (Hwang et al, 2017) and/or motoric features (e.g., how an object is handled (Padden et al, 2013). McGarry et al (2020) suggested that the concreteness-like N400 response observed for iconic signs reflects the more robust encoding of sensory-motor semantic features that are depicted by these signs and that are emphasized by the picture naming task.…”

Section: Iconicitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This form-to-meaning mapping could have a unique influence on naming behavior in sign languages and might give rise to modality-specific influences on picture naming. Indeed, several picture naming studies have reported that iconicity facilitated lexical access and sped up response times for pictures that were named with iconic compared to less-iconic or non-iconic signs (Baus, Gutierrez-Sigut, et al, 2008;McGarry et al, 2020;Navarrette et al, 2017;Pretato et al, 2017;Vinson et al, 2015). However, it is unknown how iconicity uniquely, as well as jointly with other factors, contributes to lexical retrieval and production in sign language.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Sehyr¹,

Emmorey²

2021

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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 RTs. 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 dataset 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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