The sentence repetition task as a measure of sign language proficiency

Krister Schönström,Peter C Hauser

doi:10.1017/s0142716421000436

Krister Schönström, Peter C Hauser

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1017/s0142716421000436

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Abstract

AbstractSign language research is important for our understanding of languages in general and for the impact it has on policy and on the lives of deaf people. There is a need for a sign language proficiency measure, to use as a grouping or continuous variable, both in psycholinguistics and in other sign language research. This article describes the development of a Swedish Sign Language Sentence Repetition Test (STS-SRT) and the evidence that supports the validity of the test’s interpretation and use. The STS-SRT was administered to 44 deaf adults and children, and was shown to have excellent internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.915) and inter-rater reliability (Intraclass Correlation Coefficient [ICC] = 0.900, p < .001). A linear mixed model analysis revealed that adults scored 20.2% higher than children, and delayed sign language acquisition were associated with lower scores. As the sign span of sentences increased, participants relied on their implicit linguistic knowledge to scaffold their sentence repetitions beyond rote memory. The results provide reliability and validity evidence to support the use of STS-SRT in research as a measure of STS proficiency.

Highlights

Sign language research has significantly informed basic and applied sciences, yielding practical implications for both
Swedish Sign Language has been a part of deaf bilingual education for nearly 40 years, both as the language of instruction for deaf pupils in classrooms, and as a school subject with its own curriculum in Swedish deaf schools (Mahshie, 1995; Svartholm, 2010)
Translated, corpus, and novel sentences The STS-Sentence Repetition Task (SRT) began with 60 sentences from 3 different sources; 20 were translated from the American Sign Language (ASL)-SRT (Hauser et al, 2008), 20 were from the Swedish Sign Language Corpus (STSC, Mesch & Wallin, 2012), and 20 novel sentences were developed for this project

Summary

Introduction

Sign language research has significantly informed basic and applied sciences, yielding practical implications for both. Hauser et al (2008) developed ASL-SRT, for American Sign Language (ASL), based on an English oral repetition test (Hammill et al, 1994) that required participants to listen to English sentences of increasing length and morphosyntactic complexity and immediately repeat them correctly with 100% accuracy They chose to use the SRT approach because it can be administered both to children and adults, and because past studies have shown it to be a good measure of language proficiency. It has been claimed that individuals with developing language skills or SLI have less accurate sentence repetitions because they do not have available linguistic knowledge to scaffold sentences in episodic memory (Alptekin & Erçetin, 2010; Coughlin & Tremblay, 2013; Van den Noort et al, 2006)

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