Research

Grants & Awards

NIH NIDCD Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA F31 Predoctoral fellowship for doctoral training and research on the effects of late first language acquisition on phonological processing in American Sign Language

NSF Linguistics Program Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (Ling-DDRI) grant for work on "Late first language acquisition effects on phonological processing in American Sign Language"

Best Theory Presentation by a Student Researcher at the International Conference on Sign Language Acquisition 4, June 23-25, 2022, virtually, at Boston University

Image shows the logos for NIH NIDCD, NSF, and ICSLA

Projects

Late Age of Acquisition Effects on Phonological Processing in ASL

Language deprivation and subsequent late first language acquisition affect language production and comprehension, but less is known about how late first language signers acquire and process phonology specifically. Through psycholinguistic methods, my work aims to provide a better understanding of phonological processing of deaf late first language signers who learned American Sign Language (ASL) as a first language after early childhood. This work can foremost help us to better understand the effects of language deprivation and late first language acquisition on language processing and can also provide insight into language acquisition and human cognition more broadly.

Phonological Production

- Lynne Nielson, S., & Mayberry, R. I. (2025). Production of real signs but not pseudosigns affected by age of acquisition in American Sign Language. Memory & Cognition. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-024-01656-y
- Nielson, S., Mayberry, R. I. (2022, June 23-25). Effects of Age of Acquisition on the Phonological System of American Sign Language. [Conference Talk]. International Conference on Sign Language Acquisition 4, online. [Video: ASL, IS, spoken English, English captions]
- Nielson, S., Mayberry, R. I. (2021, November 4-7). Late First Language Acquisition Alters the Phonological System of ASL. [Poster session]. Boston University Conference on Language Development 46, online. [PDF]

BUCLDposter.pdf

Phonological Perception

- Nielson, S., Mayberry, R.I. (2025, January 14- 17). Effects of Late Age of Acquisition on Phonological Perception in American Sign Language. [Stage Talk]. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 15, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
- Nielson, S., Mayberry, R.I. (2024, November 7-10). Age of acquisition and lexicality effects on phonological perception in American Sign Language. [Poster]. Boston University Conference on Language Development 49, Boston, Massachusetts.

Sign Language Phonological Typology

This is collaborative work with Rachel Miles, a PhD candidate also in the UC San Diego Linguistics Department. We are looking at the phonological inventories across seven sign languages (Hong Kong Sign Language, Ho Chi Minh Vietnamese Sign Language, Sri Lankan Sign Language, Jakarta Indonesian Sign Language, Yogyakarata Sign Language, Japanese Sign Language, and American Sign Language) to further the understanding of what aspects of phonology are universal and which are language-specific across sign languages from different language families. We thank the researchers working on the databases (Asian SignBank and ASL-LEX) we are using for this project.

Phoneme Markedness

Nielson, S., Miles, R. (2022, September 27-30). The Universal and the Particular: Cross-linguistic Markedness of Handshape. [Poster session]. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 14, Osaka, Japan. [PDF]

NielsonMiles_TISLR2022poster.pdf

Phoneme Distribution

Miles, R., Nielson, S. (2022, September 27-30). Cross-linguistic Distributional Properties of Phonological Handshape. [Conference Talk]. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 14, Osaka, Japan.

Other Publications

Miles, R., Lynne Nielson, S.*, İlkbaşaran, D., & Mayberry, R. I. (2025). An embodied multi-articulatory multimodal language framework: A commentary on Karadöller, Sümer and Özyürek. First Language, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237251326977 *co-first author

Current Lab

Mayberry Laboratory for Multimodal Language Processing at UC San Diego

Past Labs

Cognitive Neurolinguistics Lab at the Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis

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