title: The role of iconicity in sign language learning by hearing adults.
abstract: The feature of transparency has been identified as facilitating the learning of manual signs as word surrogates. The recognition and retention of transparent and nontransparent signs by 50 sign-naive hearing college freshmen was investigated in three tasks: (1) a transparency task; (2) after a training period, a short-term memory task; and (3) a long-term memory task. Results indicated that both transparent and nontransparent signs were retained over a short and a long period of time; however, there was a significant decrease in the number of nontransparent signs retained as the period of time after training increased. Implications for sign language training are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield, MO 65804-0095.
authors.forename: A K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Lieberth
authors.forename: M E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Gamble
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D012813:Sign Language; D014825:Vocabulary