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Applied Linguistics 1992 13(2):185-201; doi:10.1093/applin/13.2.185
© 1992 by Oxford University Press
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Forced Choice Recognition of Sign in Novice Learners of British Sign Language

RUTH CAMPBELL,, PAULA MARTIN, and THERESA WHITE

Goldsmiths College
Friends World College New York
University of Oxford

Novice learners of British Sign Language (BSL) and matched sign-naive subjects were given a recognition test for possible and 'impossible' BSL signs (Experiment 1). Three list types were investigated: a list of signs known to the learners; a similar list not known to the learners; and a list of 'non-signs' formed using 'illegal' BSL formational parameters. Novice-learners were superior to non-learners on all lists. In a different population of sign-naive subjects (Experiment 2), people who tried to name the signs on presentations were significantly better than non-namers. Recognition performance was significantly better for 'legal' than 'illegal'signs in all groups and conditions.

Overall, it was rated iconicity, not knowledge of sign, that determined recog-nition accuracy. Iconicity also correlated with ease of naming where naming was required at presentation, although naming did not interact with iconicity in predicting recognition scores in Experiment 2.

We conclude that the superiority of sign-learners in this task may reflect a general improvement in the ability to process potentially meaningful gestures (which have the perceptual property ofconfigural coherence, reflected in high iconicity scores) and that naming on presentation can be one aspect of such improvement. This may be a transitory stage in the acquisition of sign as a second language.


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