Abstract
The nature of grammatical structure in American Sign Language (ASL) was investigated using a short-term free-recall paradigm. Grammatical signed sentences and random strings of ASL signs were visually presented to 60 deaf ASL users. Either a nonsense sign or a finger-spelled consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) was embedded in each string. The number of nonsense items recalled and the total number of signs recalled were significantly greater for grammatical strings than for random strings. The results extend previous findings and suggest that, as in speech, grammatical structure is actively utilized in the processing of ASL, serving to increase the efficiency of such processing.
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This research was supported in part by National Institutes of Health Research Grant NS-09590-03 from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, Harry W. Hoemann, Principal Investigator. We are grateful to Horace Reynolds, Chairman, Department of Psychology, Gallaudet College, and to Clarence Williams, Associate Dean for Research, Gallaudet College, for their assistance in obtaining subjects and physical facilities.
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Tweney, R.D., Heiman, G.W. The effect of sign language grammatical structure on recall. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 10, 331–334 (1977). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329352
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329352