Sign recall by hearing signers: Evidences of dual coding

Abstract

Deaf participants' sign recall is affected by sign similarity, sign length, irrelevant signing and manual articulatory suppression, suggesting the existence of a phonological loop for signs. In two experiments we explore whether hearing signers (who have learned Spanish Sign Language as second language) use a phonological loop for signs, whether they use their phonological loop for words or whether they use both when recalling sign lists. Articulatory suppression (manual and vocal) and list similarity (word similarity and sign similarity) were manipulated in two experiments. Results clearly suggest that our participants recode orally the signs and use those representations to recall sign lists, but visuospatial information is also used in this task.

Keywords:

• Bilinguals
• Hearing signers
• Sign language
• Similarity effect
• Suppression effect
• Working memory

Acknowledgements

We thank all the students who have participated in these studies, and the staff of La Rosaleda High School and IES N°1 for the facilities to measure participants. We are grateful to Manolo Perea, Alice Healy, Matt O'Gara, Julio Santiago, and two anonymous reviewers for their many thoughtful comments on a previous version of this work.

Notes

¹Linguists have broadened the term phonology to encompass the sublexical structure of sign language too, due to the existence of basic components (handshape, location, movement, and palm orientation) that are combined in rule-governed ways to create signs in the same way that phonemes combine to form words in spoken languages (e.g., Battison, 1974). Although not everybody agrees with this view (Healey, 1963, cited in Battison, 1974), in the present research we will adopt the most extended view: the idea of sign language as phonemic.

²We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out the relevance of these contradictory results.