Language experience in LSF development: Behavioral evidence from a sentence repetition task

PLoS One. 2020 Nov 17;15(11):e0236729. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0236729. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

In psycholinguistics and clinical linguistics, the Sentence Repetition Task (SRT) is known to be a valuable tool to screen general language abilities in both spoken and signed languages. This task enables users to reliably and quickly assess linguistic abilities at different levels of linguistic analysis such as phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax. To evaluate sign language proficiency in deaf children using French Sign Language (LSF), we designed a new SRT comprising 20 LSF sentences. The task was administered to a cohort of 62 children- 34 native signers (6;09-12 years) and 28 non-native signers (6;08-12;08 years)-in order to study their general linguistic development as a function of age of sign language acquisition (AOA) and chronological age (CA). Previously, a group of 10 adult native signers was also evaluated with this task. As expected, our results showed a significant effect of AOA, indicating that the native signers repeated more signs and were more accurate than non-native signers. A similar pattern of results was found for CA. Furthermore, native signers made fewer phonological errors (i.e., handshape, movement, and location) than non-native signers. Finally, as shown in previous sign language studies, handshape and movement proved to be the most difficult parameters to master regardless of AOA and CA. Taken together, our findings support the assumption that AOA is a crucial factor in the development of phonological skills regardless of language modality (spoken vs. signed). This study thus constitutes a first step toward a theoretical description of the developmental trajectory in LSF, a hitherto understudied language.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Child
  • Deafness / physiopathology*
  • Deafness / psychology*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Mental Recall / physiology*
  • Middle Aged
  • Psycholinguistics / methods*
  • Sign Language*

Grants and funding

This research was partially supported by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency – EACEA (543264-LLP- 1-2013-1-ITKA2-KA2MP “SignMET” – Principal Investigator: Pasquale Rinaldi). Sign Language coders were paid by the EVASIGNE Project (Paris Lumière University Funding) (PI: Caroline Bogliotti & Marion Blondel). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. No additional external funding was received for this study.