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Learning to look: The acquisition of eye gaze agreement during the production of ASL verbs*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2009

ROBIN L. THOMPSON ,
KAREN EMMOREY  and
ROBERT KLUENDER
ROBIN L. THOMPSON*
Affiliation:
University College London
KAREN EMMOREY
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
ROBERT KLUENDER
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
*
Address for correspondence: Robin Thompson, Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL), Department of Cognitive Perceptual and Brain Sciences, University College London, 49 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD, UK[email protected]
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Abstract

In American Sign Language (ASL), native signers use eye gaze to mark agreement (Thompson, Emmorey and Kluender, 2006). Such agreement is unique (it is articulated with the eyes) and complex (it occurs with only two out of three verb types, and marks verbal arguments according to a noun phrase accessibility hierarchy). In a language production experiment using head-mounted eye-tracking, we investigated the extent to which eye gaze agreement can be mastered by late second-language (L2) learners. The data showed that proficient late learners (with an average of 18.8 years signing experience) mastered a cross-linguistically prevalent pattern (NP-accessibility) within the eye gaze agreement system but ignored an idiosyncratic feature (marking agreement on only a subset of verbs). Proficient signers produced a grammar for eye gaze agreement that diverged from that of native signers but was nonetheless consistent with language universals. A second experiment examined the eye gaze patterns of novice signers with less than two years of ASL exposure and of English-speaking non-signers. The results provided further evidence that the pattern of acquisition found for proficient L2 learners is directly related to language learning, and does not stem from more general cognitive processes for eye gaze outside the realm of language.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , October 2009 , pp. 393 - 409
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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Footnotes

*

This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation awarded to Karen Emmorey and San Diego State Research Foundation (Linguistics program: NSF BCS 0517994) and by the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain (Grant RES-620–28-6001), awarded to the Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL). We would like to thank Michael Klieman, Grant Goodall, Victor Ferreira, John Moore, Masha Polinsky and four anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We are grateful to Helsa Borinstein, Rachael Colvin, Jeane Kim, Tayler Mayer, Stephen McCullough and David Vinson for valuable help with data analysis and conducting the experiment. Finally, we are especially grateful to all of the participants who made this research possible.

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