ASL Phonological Fluency: How Do Deaf Signers Retrieve and Produce Signs?

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Deaf Studies
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• American Sign Language (ASL) acquisition is crucial for deaf children's development.
• ASL phonology, involving parameters like handshape, location, and movement, is a key component of fluency.
• Previous research explored ASL sign production under handshape constraints.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate ASL sign production and recall in deaf adults and students.
• To examine the influence of semantic, location, and handshape factors on sign production and memory.
• To explore implications for ASL instruction.

Main Methods:

• Expanded expressive ASL phonological fluency tasks.
• Assessed sign production with constraints on handshape and location.
• Investigated recall and production of adjacent signs within semantic and phonological clusters.

Main Results:

• Deaf adults showed enhanced sign recall based on semantic connections and shared location.
• Deaf students also benefited from semantic and location clustering.
• Shared handshape additionally facilitated sign production in students.

Conclusions:

• Semantic and location clustering are significant factors in ASL recall for deaf adults and students.
• Handshape clustering also aids ASL sign production in deaf students.
• Findings provide valuable insights for developing effective ASL instructional methods for deaf learners.