My fascination with sign language and the mind began in 2005 while working in the BBC Access Services department in London, UK. As part of my job, I worked together with Deaf British Sign Language interpreters to provide sign language interpretation, subtitling and audio description for deaf and blind audiences. I was introduced to the Deaf community and quickly began learning British Sign Language (BSL). As a linguist by training, I immediately became interested in the brain's capacity for language that was clearly not limited to speech or auditory communication. I had just started my Master's degree in Linguistics at Birkbeck and realized that sign language offers a unique possibility to explore aspects of language that are universal and aspects that are specific to the modality of the language (spoken-auditory vs. manual-visual). For example, all languages, spoken or signed, have the ability to combine small building components (i.e. 'phonemes') into words or signs. But some aspects may be unique to sign languages. For example, there are many signs that "look" like what they mean, referred to as iconicity (examples from American Sign Language below). There are very few words in English that "sound" like what they mean.
Does exposure to sign language improve visuo-spatial abilities or help us ‘see’ better? Is the deaf signing brain different from the hearing speaking brain? My basic questions soon turned into deeper, more specific scientific inquiries and after completing my Master's degree, more rigorous research training was necessary if I were to look for answers. I received generous PhD studentship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and University College London (UCL) Graduate School to investigate the perceptual and linguistic impact of deafness and sign language exposure.
My doctoral research used a well-known psychological phenomenon of categorical perception to investigate the structure of BSL signs. One of my findings was that deaf individuals, who signed BSL as their first language since birth, showed augmented perceptual sensitivity to tiny changes in hand configuration (Sehyr & Cormier, 2015) (more on this in a separate post to come). Receiving international recognition and 2nd prize in Best Paper competition for this work in 2010 at the ISGS Gesture, Evolution, Brain and Linguistic Structures conference in Germany, I was at point of no return! More evidence from sign language research allowed the possibility to revisit some established theories of language that have been largely based on evidence from spoken (or written) language. It would help increase the status of sign languages, such as BSL or ASL, as natural languages in their own right. And, above many other amazing things, sign language explorations would lead to more successful rocket launches and exciting space missions! ...
My doctoral research used a well-known psychological phenomenon of categorical perception to investigate the structure of BSL signs. One of my findings was that deaf individuals, who signed BSL as their first language since birth, showed augmented perceptual sensitivity to tiny changes in hand configuration (Sehyr & Cormier, 2015) (more on this in a separate post to come). Receiving international recognition and 2nd prize in Best Paper competition for this work in 2010 at the ISGS Gesture, Evolution, Brain and Linguistic Structures conference in Germany, I was at point of no return! More evidence from sign language research allowed the possibility to revisit some established theories of language that have been largely based on evidence from spoken (or written) language. It would help increase the status of sign languages, such as BSL or ASL, as natural languages in their own right. And, above many other amazing things, sign language explorations would lead to more successful rocket launches and exciting space missions! ...
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