Cross-language activation in deaf LIS (Italian Sign Language) – Italian bilinguals

The present study investigates the visual word processing in deaf bimodal bilinguals who are proficient in Italian and Italian Sign Language (LIS). In particular, the research addresses the parallel activation of LIS phonology in a reading task adapting the paradigm proposed for the first time by Morford et al. (2011). Deaf bimodal bilinguals and a control group of hearing Italian native speakers judged the semantic relation of Italian written words; critically, half of the stimuli has a covert phonologically related translation in LIS. To narrow down the possibility of a strategic translation during the task, the time available for lexical processing has been controlled using a short SOA (300ms). The results are consistent with previous studies and show that bimodal bilinguals were significantly slower to judge semantically unrelated pairs if the translation equivalents in LIS were phonologically related. A significant effect of LIS covert phonology on the error rate was also found in the semantically unrelated condition. These results and the use of a fast rate of presentation of the stimuli indicate that bimodal bilinguals’ lexicon is cross-linguistically integrated, with phonological representations of the signed lexicon associated with the orthographic representation of the vocal one. Morford, J. P., Wilkinson, E., Villwock, A., Piñar, P., & Kroll, J. F. (2011). When deaf signers read English do written words activate their sign translations? Cognition, 118(2), 286-292.