Preexisting semantic representation improves working memory performance in the visuospatial domain

Rudner, Mary; Orfanidou, Eleni; Cardin, Velia; Capek, Cheryl M.; Woll, Bencie; Rönnberg, Jerker

doi:10.3758/s13421-016-0585-z

Cited by 11 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Recent findings indicate that non-lexical manual gestures are more difficult to process than are lexical manual gestures both for signers and non-signers Rudner et al, 2016). These earlier findings relating to adults were here replicated for children.…”

Section: Gesture Type and A Surprising Effect Of Sign Language Experisupporting

confidence: 75%

“…The phonology of a sign language often carries semantic information (Thompson, Vinson, Woll, & Vigliocco, 2012), and some earlier studies indicate that semantic information, in addition to phonological, does not influence the processing efficiency of sign-based stimuli in deaf adults (e.g., Cardin et al, 2016;Rudner et al, 2016). This may explain why no difference in performance was found between familiar and unfamiliar signs for DHH signing children in the present study.…”

Section: Imitation Precision Of Familiar and Unfamiliar Signscontrasting

confidence: 37%

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Signs for Developing Reading : Sign Language and Reading Development in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children

Holmer¹

2016

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Reading development is supported by strong language skills, not least in deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children. Regional Special Needs Schools (RSNS) in Sweden have a bilingual curriculum, that is, DHH pupils at these schools learn Swedish Sign Language and written and/or spoken Swedish. The work in the present thesis investigates reading development in DHH children who attend these schools and who are learning to read. The primary aim of the present work was to investigate whether the reading skills of DHH signing children can be improved via computerized sign language based literacy training aimed at strengthening the connections between sign language and written language. Another aim was to investigate concurrent and longitudinal associations between skills in reading, sign language, and cognition in this population. The results indicate that sign language skills support developing reading skills in RSNS pupils (Paper I and Paper IV). In particular, sign language based literacy training appears to support development of word reading (Paper IV). In addition, awareness of the sublexical structure of sign language seems to assist word reading (Paper I). Interestingly, the ability to imitate manual gestures was related to reading skills. More specifically, precision of imitation of unfamiliar signs was associated with development of word reading (Paper IV) and precision of imitation of familiar signs, i.e., vocabulary, seemed to be associated with developing reading comprehension (Paper IV). Results also suggest that working memory and Theory of Mind (ToM) are related to reading comprehension in RSNS pupils (Paper III). In addition to these findings relating to reading development, results also suggest that sign language experience enhance the establishment of representations of manual gestures (Paper II), and that progression in ToM seem to be typical, although delayed, in RSNS pupils who are learning to read (Paper III). Taken together, the associations revealed between sign language skills and reading development support the notion that sign language skills may provide a foundation for promotion of reading skills in DHH signing children. Thus, interventions that support development of sign-based representations and their manipulation and use in written language processing, may improve reading skills in this population. To account for the present findings, a model of written language processing is proposed. Working memory has a central role in integrating environmental stimuli and language-mediated representations, and thereby provides a platform for cross-modal language processing and multimodal language development. SammanfattningEn god språklig förmåga bidrar till god läsutveckling, inte minst hos döva och hörselskadade barn. Specialpedagogiska skolmyndighetens specialskolor för döva och hörselskadade (D/H) barn har en tvåspråkig läroplan som innebär att elever på dessa skolor lär sig både svenskt teckenspråk och skriven och/eller talad svenska. De fyra arbeten som ingår i avhandlingen undersöker l...

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Section: Gesture Type and A Surprising Effect Of Sign Language Experisupporting

confidence: 75%

Section: Imitation Precision Of Familiar and Unfamiliar Signscontrasting

confidence: 37%

Signs for Developing Reading : Sign Language and Reading Development in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children

Holmer¹

2016

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“…These authors suggested one reason for this finding might be that hearing signers are more likely to use English subvocal rehearsal than deaf signers, which could facilitate serial recall (see Hall and Bavelier, 2011). Rudner et al (2016) also suggest that hearing signers may make strategic use of their speech-based representations for mnemonic purposes. However, the pattern of findings from our study argues against this interpretation because we found an advantage for English over ASL for hearing bilinguals on the STM task.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relation between working memory and language comprehension in signers and speakers

et al. 2017

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This study investigated the relation between linguistic and spatial working memory (WM) resources and language comprehension for signed compared to spoken language. Sign languages are both linguistic and visual-spatial, and therefore provide a unique window on modality-specific versus modality-independent contributions of WM resources to language processing. Deaf users of American Sign Language (ASL), hearing monolingual English speakers, and hearing ASL-English bilinguals completed several spatial and linguistic serial recall tasks. Additionally, their comprehension of spatial and non-spatial information in ASL and spoken English narratives was assessed. Results from the linguistic serial recall tasks revealed that the often reported advantage for speakers on linguistic short-term memory tasks does not extend to complex WM tasks with a serial recall component. For English, linguistic WM predicted retention of non-spatial information, and both linguistic and spatial WM predicted retention of spatial information. For ASL, spatial WM predicted retention of spatial (but not non-spatial) information, and linguistic WM did not predict retention of either spatial or non-spatial information. Overall, our findings argue against strong assumptions of independent domain-specific subsystems for the storage and processing of linguistic and spatial information and furthermore suggest a less important role for serial encoding in signed than spoken language comprehension.

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“…When only matching phonological representations are available, a cohort of lexical candidates will be activated ( Marslen-Wilson, 1987 ) that is unconstrained by meaning, and language processing will probably be less efficient. When input bears reduced phonological information, phonological constraints will be fewer and processing will probably be even less efficient ( Rudner et al, 2016 ). These factors are likely to be of importance even in the developing language system ( Mann et al, 2010 ; Sundström et al, 2014 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, in the present study, we predicted that Swedish DHH signing children would be better at imitating SSL signs with both semantic and phonological information than BSL signs with phonological information only, and better at imitating lexical signs (SSL and BSL) than non-signs with reduced phonological information. Because recent studies indicate that non-signs are more difficult to process than lexical signs, even for non-signers ( Cardin et al, 2016 ; Rudner et al, 2016 ), we predicted that both groups would be better at imitating lexicalized signs (both SSL and BSL) than non-signs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imitation, Sign Language Skill and the Developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU) Model

2016

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Imitation and language processing are closely connected. According to the Ease of Language Understanding (ELU) model (Rönnberg et al., 2013) pre-existing mental representation of lexical items facilitates language understanding. Thus, imitation of manual gestures is likely to be enhanced by experience of sign language. We tested this by eliciting imitation of manual gestures from deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) signing and hearing non-signing children at a similar level of language and cognitive development. We predicted that the DHH signing children would be better at imitating gestures lexicalized in their own sign language (Swedish Sign Language, SSL) than unfamiliar British Sign Language (BSL) signs, and that both groups would be better at imitating lexical signs (SSL and BSL) than non-signs. We also predicted that the hearing non-signing children would perform worse than DHH signing children with all types of gestures the first time (T1) we elicited imitation, but that the performance gap between groups would be reduced when imitation was elicited a second time (T2). Finally, we predicted that imitation performance on both occasions would be associated with linguistic skills, especially in the manual modality. A split-plot repeated measures ANOVA demonstrated that DHH signers imitated manual gestures with greater precision than non-signing children when imitation was elicited the second but not the first time. Manual gestures were easier to imitate for both groups when they were lexicalized than when they were not; but there was no difference in performance between familiar and unfamiliar gestures. For both groups, language skills at T1 predicted imitation at T2. Specifically, for DHH children, word reading skills, comprehension and phonological awareness of sign language predicted imitation at T2. For the hearing participants, language comprehension predicted imitation at T2, even after the effects of working memory capacity and motor skills were taken into account. These results demonstrate that experience of sign language enhances the ability to imitate manual gestures once representations have been established, and suggest that the inherent motor patterns of lexical manual gestures are better suited for representation than those of non-signs. This set of findings prompts a developmental version of the ELU model, D-ELU.

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Preexisting semantic representation improves working memory performance in the visuospatial domain

Cited by 11 publications

References 49 publications

Signs for Developing Reading : Sign Language and Reading Development in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children

Signs for Developing Reading : Sign Language and Reading Development in Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Children

The relation between working memory and language comprehension in signers and speakers

Imitation, Sign Language Skill and the Developmental Ease of Language Understanding (D-ELU) Model

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