Lending a hand to signed language acquisition: Enactment and iconicity enhance sign recall in hearing adult American Sign Language learners

Abstract

For hearing adults, signed language processing increases the salience of iconicity and motor system involvement relative to spoken language processing. Nevertheless, it is unclear how embodied action, mental imagery and iconicity influence their acquisition of signed language. The current study examines the impact of these factors on sign acquisition by manipulating how signs are learned, as well as their semantic and phonological relatedness. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that American Sign Language (ASL) signs are learned more effectively via enactment than via referent visualisation and meaningless hand motion, and that iconic signs are learned more effectively than other types of signs. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrate that, when learned via enactment, semantically related ASL signs are recalled more accurately than phonologically related ASL signs. These results indicate that hearing adults' sign language acquisition can be enhanced via a learning method that combines mental imagery and meaningful embodied action (i.e., enactment), strengthening connections between the forms of signs and their referents.