Meade Gabriela, Lee Brittany, Midgley Katherine J, Holcomb Phillip J, Emmorey Karen
Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communicative Disorders, San Diego State University and University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA.
Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA.
Lang Cogn Neurosci. 2018;33(9):1092-1106. doi: 10.1080/23273798.2018.1446543. Epub 2018 Mar 7.
This study investigated the electrophysiological signatures of phonological and semantic priming in American Sign Language (ASL). Deaf signers made semantic relatedness judgments to pairs of ASL signs separated by a 1300 ms prime-target SOA. Phonologically related sign pairs shared two of three phonological parameters (handshape, location, and movement). Target signs preceded by phonologically related and semantically related prime signs elicited smaller negativities within the N300 and N400 windows than those preceded by unrelated primes. N300 effects, typically reported in studies of picture processing, are interpreted to reflect the mapping from the visual features of the signs to more abstract linguistic representations. N400 effects, consistent with rhyme priming effects in the spoken language literature, are taken to index lexico-semantic processes that appear to be largely modality independent. Together, these results highlight both the unique visual-manual nature of sign languages and the linguistic processing characteristics they share with spoken languages.
本研究调查了美国手语（ASL）中语音和语义启动的电生理特征。聋人手语者对以1300毫秒启动刺激 - 目标刺激间隔（SOA）隔开的ASL手势对进行语义相关性判断。语音相关的手势对在三个语音参数（手型、位置和动作）中共享两个。与无关启动刺激相比，由语音相关和语义相关的启动手势之前的目标手势在N300和N400窗口内引发的负波较小。N300效应通常在图片处理研究中报道，被解释为反映从手势的视觉特征到更抽象语言表征的映射。N400效应与口语语言文献中的押韵启动效应一致，被视为索引词汇语义过程，这些过程似乎在很大程度上与模态无关。总之，这些结果突出了手语独特的视觉 - 手动性质以及它们与口语共享的语言处理特征。
