Iconicity in Sign Language Production: Task Matters

This is a preprint of this manuscript, in press at Neuropsychologia (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108166). The present study explored the influence of iconicity on sign lexical retrieval and whether its influence is modulated depending on the type of stimuli employed in the task. Lexical frequency was also included as a control variable indexing lexical processing. Behavioural and electrophysiological measures (ERPs) were collected from 22 Deaf bimodal bilinguals while performing a picture naming task in Catalan Sign Language (LSC) and a word-to-sign translation task (Spanish written-words to LSC). Iconicity effects were observed in the picture naming task, but not in the word-to-sign translation task, both behaviourally and at the ERP level. In contrast, frequency effects were observed in the two tasks, with ERP effects appearing earlier in the word-to-sign translation than in the picture naming task. These results support the idea that iconicity in sign language is not pervasive but modulated by the stimuli that trigger lexical access. As discussed, iconicity effects in sign language would be emphasized when naming pictures because lexical representations in this task tap into semantics more. Conversely, attenuated iconicity effects when translating words might result because lexical representations are directly accessed from the orthographic representation of the word.