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Postdoctorial Fellowship Award Winner 

Sensorimotor EEG responses to iconicity and embodied processing during sign language production

Poster Session F - Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom
Also presenting in Data Blitz Session 3 - Saturday, March 7, 2026, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm PST, Salon E.

Meghan E. McGarry¹ (), Lorna C. Quandt¹; ¹Gallaudet University

One significant difference between signed and spoken languages is the use of the visual-motor modality, which allows for structured (iconic) mapping between the sign and the referent. Prior research has suggested a facilitatory effect of iconicity during language tasks. Some iconic signs depict how the referent is used using a motorically-iconic mapping, and processing these motorically-iconic signs may be facilitated by the accessing past sensorimotor experiences (e.g., embodied cognition). If embodied cognition processes do support sign processing, we predict that iconic signs will be produced more quickly than non-iconic signs and that we will find electrophysiological evidence of embodied engagement in the sensorimotor cortex. In an American Sign Language (ASL) picture-naming task, we found that a group of fluent deaf signers (n = 24) produce motorically-iconic signs significantly faster than non-iconic signs (p = 0.032). Both groups performed with near-perfect accuracy. We used Time-Frequency Analyses (TFA) conducted on EEG from the picture-naming task to look for evidence of mu rhythm desynchronization, which indexes sensorimotor engagement.. In particular, we examined changes in sensorimotor oscillatory activity between 400-600ms after picture presentation to capture effects of embodied cognition during lexical retrieval. In the beta frequency band (18-25 Hz), we found evidence of greater desynchronization for motorically-iconic signs compared to non-iconic signs, suggesting embodied engagement during lexical retrieval. Along with the facilitated reaction times, this suggests sign iconicity influences how the sensorimotor system processes language in skilled signers, and that the recruitment of embodied cognition results in less effortful production.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Semantic