The effects of learning American Sign Language on co-speech gesture

Abstract

Given that the linguistic articulators for sign language are also used to produce co-speech gesture, we examined whether one year of academic instruction in American Sign Language (ASL) impacts the rate and nature of gestures produced when speaking English. A survey study revealed that 75% of ASL learners (N = 95), but only 14% of Romance language learners (N = 203), felt that they gestured more after one year of language instruction. A longitudinal study confirmed this perception. Twenty-one ASL learners and 20 Romance language learners (French, Italian, Spanish) were filmed re-telling a cartoon story before and after one academic year of language instruction. Only the ASL learners exhibited an increase in gesture rate, an increase in the production of iconic gestures, and an increase in the number of handshape types exploited in co-speech gesture. Five ASL students also produced at least one ASL sign when re-telling the cartoon. We suggest that learning ASL may (i) lower the neural threshold for co-speech gesture production, (ii) pose a unique challenge for language control, and (iii) have the potential to improve cognitive processes that are linked to gesture.

Gesture as simulated action: Revisiting the framework

“…Interestingly, however, learning a second language with a different cultural norm regarding gesture may lead to shifts in speakers' thresholds; speakers who are bilingual in Chinese and American English gesture more when speaking Chinese than do monolingual Chinese speakers (So, 2010), suggesting that their experiences speaking English have led to lower thresholds across languages. Moreover, experience learning American Sign Language (ASL) may also lead to generally lower gesture thresholds; people who have a year of experience with ASL produce more speech-accompanying gestures when speaking English than do people who have a year of experience learning a second spoken language (Casey, Emmorey, & Larrabee, 2012).…”

Multimodal integration of spontaneously produced representational co-speech gestures: an fMRI study

“…Thus, in addition to typical co-speech gesture perception, bimodal bilinguals have unique experience integrating manual signs with speech. Previous work demonstrating that sign language experience affects co-speech gesture production (Casey & Emmorey, 2009; Casey et al, 2012) hinted that gestures might carry particular salience for hearing signers, which could impact brain systems recruited for multimodal semantic integration. However, this hypothesis was not supported, indicating that the frequent perception of “co-speech signs” does not impact the neural systems engaged in processing co-speech gestures.…”

“…We speculate that early and concurrent acquisition of speech and sign may lead to the development of relatively segregated systems for processing sign language and co-speech gesture. However, the sequential acquisition of a spoken and then a signed language (as a second language) might lead to less segregated, more interactive systems (Casey et al, 2012). In that case, the interaction of these systems may modulate brain responses in late signers, compared to non-signers, during co-speech gesture perception.…”

“…increased proportion of iconic gestures; greater handshape diversity; Casey & Emmorey, 2009; Casey, Larrabee, & Emmorey, 2012), but how ASL knowledge effects the co-speech gesture perception system has yet to be examined. We therefore included a group of hearing bimodal bilinguals, with native fluency in American Sign Language (ASL) and English, and compared their responses to co-speech gesture with those of monolingual speakers.…”

Information packaging in speech shapes information packaging in gesture: The role of speech planning units in the coordination of speech-gesture production

“…All participants gave written consent to have their data included in the study. Three participants were excluded because they had learned German sign language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache).We excluded those participants because previous studies found that learning a sign language has an influence on co-speech gesture production in terms of gesture frequency (Casey, Emmorey, & Larrabee, 2012) and in terms of the production of signs while speaking (Casey & Emmorey, 2008;Casey et al, 2012). Another two participants were excluded because they did not use any iconic gestures depicting the target motion events, and one participant had to be excluded due to technical problems.…”