Chapter 2
Psycholinguistics

Assignment 3

In an experiment, a set of 15 signs were taught to hearing adults, who had no previous knowledge of any sign language. This set consisted of 5 transparent iconic signs, 5 non-transparent iconic signs, and 5 arbitrary signs. After they had been presented with the signs three times (with the meaning in a spoken language provided), the adults were tested after five minutes on their comprehension and production of the signs. The test was carried out again after 1 hour and after 24 hours. For comprehension, the meaning given to the sign by the adult was noted, and for production, the realisation of the parameters of the sign was noted, for example the handshape, etcetera.

  1. Which results do you expect for the comprehension of these signs? And why?

  2. Which results do you expect for production? And why?

  3. Do you expect a difference in the results after 5 minutes, 1 hour, and 24 hours?

  4. Signs that are similar in form to a gesticulation were excluded. What do you think motivated this decision?

  5. Do you expect the same results in another sign language?

  6. Try to do this experiment yourself with friends or colleagues using a sign language you know.

This exercise is intended as a practical experiment that the students do themselves, but in principle, it could also be done as a thought experiment. The process of determining whether a sign from the specific sign language is iconic (or not) also focuses attention on this aspect from Chapter 1.

  1. Comprehension should be best for the transparent iconic signs, then the non-transparent iconic signs, and last the arbitrary signs. Given their world knowledge, iconicity generally helps second language learners to interpret the meaning of a sign and to remember it.

  2. Production should reflect the same order but be worse than comprehension. The details of a sign, i.e. all its parameters, are complex to reproduce. Again iconicity helps second language learners to remember the form of the signs.

  3. The greater the time lag the worse both comprehension and production become.

  4. Signs that are similar to a gesticulation should be excluded since these will be known to hearing people and therefore influence the results.

  5. The general results should be the same in any sign language but not of course with the same signs.