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The effects of learning American Sign Language on co-speech gesture*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

SHANNON CASEY ,
KAREN EMMOREY  and
HEATHER LARRABEE
SHANNON CASEY*
Affiliation:
San Diego State University Research Foundation
KAREN EMMOREY
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
HEATHER LARRABEE
Affiliation:
San Diego State University Research Foundation
*
Address for correspondence: Shannon Casey, Laboratory for Language and Cognitive Neuroscience, 6495 Alvarado Road, Suite 200, San Diego, CA 92120, USA[email protected]
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Abstract

Given that the linguistic articulators for sign language are also used to produce co-speech gesture, we examined whether one year of academic instruction in American Sign Language (ASL) impacts the rate and nature of gestures produced when speaking English. A survey study revealed that 75% of ASL learners (N = 95), but only 14% of Romance language learners (N = 203), felt that they gestured more after one year of language instruction. A longitudinal study confirmed this perception. Twenty-one ASL learners and 20 Romance language learners (French, Italian, Spanish) were filmed re-telling a cartoon story before and after one academic year of language instruction. Only the ASL learners exhibited an increase in gesture rate, an increase in the production of iconic gestures, and an increase in the number of handshape types exploited in co-speech gesture. Five ASL students also produced at least one ASL sign when re-telling the cartoon. We suggest that learning ASL may (i) lower the neural threshold for co-speech gesture production, (ii) pose a unique challenge for language control, and (iii) have the potential to improve cognitive processes that are linked to gesture.

Keywords

gestureAmerican Sign Languagebilingualism
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 677 - 686
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by NIH Grant R01 HD047736 awarded to Karen Emmorey and San Diego State University. We thank Rachael Colvin for help with gesture coding, and Helsa Borinstein, Kathryn Cooke, Kara Hedlund, Cynthia Kilpatrick, Jeane Kim, Rebecca Obayashi, Danny Perez, Nathan Portugues, Jennie Pyers, Nicole Silverstein, and Robin Thompson for additional help with the study. We also thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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