Williams Joshua T, Stone Adam, Newman Sharlene D
Indiana University.
Gallaudet University.
J Deaf Stud Deaf Educ. 2017 Jul 1;22(3):303-315. doi: 10.1093/deafed/enx014.
Cognitive mechanisms for sign language lexical access are fairly unknown. This study investigated whether phonological similarity facilitates lexical retrieval in sign languages using measures from a new lexical database for American Sign Language. Additionally, it aimed to determine which similarity metric best fits the present data in order to inform theories of how phonological similarity is constructed within the lexicon and to aid in the operationalization of phonological similarity in sign language. Sign repetition latencies and accuracy were obtained when native signers were asked to reproduce a sign displayed on a computer screen. Results indicated that, as predicted, phonological similarity facilitated repetition latencies and accuracy as long as there were no strict constraints on the type of sublexical features that overlapped. The data converged to suggest that one similarity measure, MaxD, defined as the overlap of any 4 sublexical features, likely best represents mechanisms of phonological similarity in the mental lexicon. Together, these data suggest that lexical access in sign language is facilitated by phonologically similar lexical representations in memory and the optimal operationalization is defined as liberal constraints on overlap of 4 out of 5 sublexical features-similar to the majority of extant definitions in the literature.
手语词汇提取的认知机制尚不清楚。本研究使用来自一个新的美国手语词汇数据库的测量方法，调查了语音相似性是否有助于手语中的词汇检索。此外，它旨在确定哪种相似性度量最适合当前数据，以便为词汇中语音相似性如何构建的理论提供信息，并有助于手语中语音相似性的操作化。当要求本土手语使用者重现电脑屏幕上显示的手势时，获得了手势重复潜伏期和准确性。结果表明，正如预期的那样，只要对重叠的次词汇特征类型没有严格限制，语音相似性就会促进重复潜伏期和准确性。数据趋同表明，一种相似性度量MaxD（定义为任意4个次词汇特征的重叠）可能最能代表心理词汇中语音相似性的机制。总之，这些数据表明，记忆中语音相似的词汇表征有助于手语中的词汇提取，最佳操作化定义为对5个次词汇特征中4个特征重叠的宽松限制——类似于文献中大多数现存定义。
