Neural correlates of British sign language comprehension

Supplementary Materials

This page supplies the British Sign Language glosses for the BSL stimuli used in MacSweeney et al. (JOCN, 14 (7)). Click on any of the English sentences below to see the BSL translation in still images with glosses. A glossary for the terms used in the BSL transcriptions can be found below.

Should you have any queries regarding these materials please contact Dr. Mairead MacSweeney (m.macsweeney@ucl.ac.uk) or Prof. Bencie Woll (b.woll@city.ac.uk).

Please note: the glosses provided below are optimised for desktop computers and may not display adequately on mobile phones and tablets.

Abstract

In all signed languages used by deaf people signs are executed in 'sign space' in front of the body. Some signed sentences use this space to map detailed 'real-world' spatial relationships directly. Such sentences can be considered to exploit sign space 'topographically'. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we explored the extent to which increasing the topographic processing demands of signed sentences was reflected in the differential recruitment of brain regions in deaf and hearing native signers of British Sign Language (BSL). When BSL signers performed a sentence-anomaly judgement task the occipito-temporal junction was activated bilaterally to a greater extent for topographic than non-topographic processing. The differential role of movement in the processing of the two sentence types may account for this finding. In addition enhanced activation was observed in left inferior and superior parietal lobules during processing of topographic BSL sentences. We argue that the left parietal lobe is specifically involved in processing the precise configuration and location of hands in space to represent objects, agents and actions. Importantly, no differences in these regions were observed when hearing people heard and saw English translations of these sentences. Despite the high degree of similarity in the neural systems underlying signed and spoken languages, exploring the linguistic features which are unique to each of these broadens our understanding of the systems involved in language comprehension.

Glossary of terms used in the BSL translations

General

Signs are conventionally represented in uppercase letters (BOOK, TABLE).

( ) Text in brackets indicates additional information.

- - Hyphens are used where more than one English word is required to gloss a single sign.

Arrows have been added to indicate movement where necessary.

At beginning of line

D - dominant hand. This signer is left-handed so in these examples, the left hand is dominant.
ND - non-dominant hand. In these examples, the right hand is non-dominant.
Neither ND or D is indicated in 2-handed signs or where there is no contrastive use of the hands.

Other symbols

XX-Cl indicates where a classifier substitutes for a noun. A subscript R or L after the classifier indicates if it is located to the signer's left or right.

FLAT-Obj-cl is a flat hand, fingers extended and together, used to substitute for members of the class of flat objects (e.g. BOOK, TABLE, CAR, etc.)

THIN-Obj-cl is an extended index finger, used to substitute for members of the class of long, thin objects (e.g. STICK, PEN, PENCIL, TOOTHBRUSH, etc.)

3D-cl is a 'clawed' hand, fingers spread and curved, used to substitute for members of the class of objects perceived as having length, width and height (e.g. HOUSE, TOWN, STATION, etc)

IX (Index) is used when the signer points at a location in space in order to assign it to a specific referent or to refer to a location previously assigned to that referent. A subscript R or L after the Index indicates if it is located to the signer's left or right.

.... (dotted line) is used to indicate when a sign is articulated and the handshape is maintained on one hand while the other hand produces a different sign. For example in "The book is next to the pen on the table", the classifier for BOOK is maintained with the dominant hand, while the non-dominant hand is used to sign PEN and the classifier for PEN. The start and endpoints of the dotted line indicate when the signer begins and the ends the sign.

Examples

Topographic

• The book is next to the pen on the table
• The woman handed the boy a cup
• Paddington is to the West of Kings Cross
• The man put on the hat from the top shelf
• The bicycle kicked the pig
• The cat sat on the bed
• The videos were lined up on five shelves
• The cup climbed over the sheep
• The bouncer punched the man in the face
• I parked the car next to the truck
• The woman shaved her legs
• On the plane the boy sat next to the window
• I drove to the conference from London
• The pen ran very fast
• The two girls hid under the table
• The boy hung his coat on the coatstand
• I planted the flowers in between the tree and the bush
• The carpet was under the house
• The three wrecked cars lay on top of each other
• They hid under the bridge when it rained
• The keys are hanging on the rack on the left
• The car turned left and ran into a lorry
• The two women bumped into each other on the street
• The book was full of cows

Non-topographic

• The electricity bill was big but the gas bill was huge
• I copied the design of the dress
• My aunt's necklace is my favourite
• The kettle lectured the clock
• I will send you the date and time
• The building is being renovated
• The boy ran for hours and hours
• Smoking is bad for your health
• The computer screen is worried
• The old window was broken
• We could have a camping, B&B or self catering holiday
• Yesterday I interpreted for all of them
• You can have an apple or an orange
• My cupboard is depressed
• The boy laughed at the story
• The child was upset when he fell
• The friend didn't like the film
• The brakes on the bicycle are pencils
• Asda is much cheaper than Waitrose
• The man filmed the wedding
• The man cut the cake into four pieces
• Those two women are sisters
• The brother is older than the sister
• The teacher broke the tie