Lynne Nielson Shai, Mayberry Rachel I
Department of Linguistics, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA, 92093-0108, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2025 Jul;53(5):1356-1379. doi: 10.3758/s13421-024-01656-y. Epub 2025 Jan 22.
Research shows that insufficient language access in early childhood significantly affects language processing. While the majority of this work focuses on syntax, phonology also appears to be affected, though it is unclear exactly how. Here we investigated phonological production across age of acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL). Participants were deaf adult signers who first learned ASL at ages ranging from birth to 14 years and they performed both lexical decisions and repetitions of ASL signs and pseudosigns. Because phonological production has been understudied across age of acquisition, we were particularly interested in production accuracy for the sublexical phonological parameters of handshape, movement, and location. Lexical decision responses were slower and more accurate for impossible pseudosigns compared with possible pseudosigns, indicating participants were sensitive to ASL phonological structure regardless of age of acquisition. Despite this, age of acquisition affected repetition accuracy. Handshape errors were highest for those with earlier ages of acquisition, but movement errors were highest for those with later ages of acquisition, though this effect of age of acquisition was only seen for real ASL signs and not pseudosigns. The parameter error pattern for pseudosigns was not affected by age of acquisition. These results indicate that later age of acquisition does not inhibit the ability to produce ASL phonology but ultimately alters the processing of the phonological parameters when meaning and phonology are integrated.
研究表明，幼儿期语言接触不足会显著影响语言处理。虽然这项工作大多集中在句法上，但语音似乎也会受到影响，不过具体方式尚不清楚。在此，我们研究了美国手语（ASL）习得年龄与语音产出之间的关系。参与者为成年聋人手语使用者，他们首次学习ASL的年龄跨度从出生到14岁，并且完成了ASL手势和假手势的词汇判断及重复任务。由于语音产出在习得年龄方面的研究较少，我们特别关注手部形状、动作和位置等亚词汇语音参数的产出准确性。与可能的假手势相比，不可能的假手势的词汇判断反应更慢且更准确，这表明无论习得年龄如何，参与者对手语语音结构都很敏感。尽管如此，习得年龄会影响重复准确性。对于习得年龄较早的人来说，手部形状错误最高，但对于习得年龄较晚的人来说，动作错误最高，不过这种习得年龄的影响仅在真实手语手势而非假手势中出现。假手势的参数错误模式不受习得年龄的影响。这些结果表明，较晚的习得年龄不会抑制手语语音产出能力，但在整合意义和语音时最终会改变语音参数的处理方式。
