Karen Emmorey

Biographic Data

ID734949
NAMEKaren Emmorey
GIVEN NAMESKaren
FAMILY NAMEEmmorey
SIGNATUREEMMOREY K
AFFILIATIONSSan Diego State University
ORCID0000-0002-5647-0066
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS62
TOTAL CITATIONS29
AUTHOR COUNT61
EDITOR COUNT1
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1985
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX3

  • Orthographic representations in American Sign Language fingerspelling

    Open AccessZed Sevcikova Sehyr, Zed Sehyr et al.ARTICLEApplied Psycholinguistics2026

    This study examined fingerspelling accuracy and error patterns in deaf American Sign Language (ASL) signers and written spelling in hearing English speakers to investigate how orthographic representations are shaped by phonological, visual, and motor encoding strategies. Deaf participants ( n = 39) completed a fingerspelling repetition task, while hearing participants ( n = 35) completed a written dictation task using the same word and pseudoword…

  • Morphological processing in the parafovea during sentence reading for deaf and hearing readers

    Open AccessEmily Saunders, Karen Emmorey et al.ARTICLEApplied Psycholinguistics2026

    Evidence of parafoveal preprocessing of morphology is mixed for typical hearing readers of English: they demonstrate a preview benefit from morphology for suffixed words but not for compound or prefixed words. Deaf readers may process morphological structure more efficiently in the parafovea due to their ability to attend to information further into the periphery and their particularly tight connections between orthography and semantics, which su…

  • Avoiding unintended consequences: Science of reading policies may harm deaf children

    Open AccessTory Sampson, Amelia Becker et al.ARTICLEThe Journal of Deaf Studies and…2026

    Many U.S. policies inspired by the Science of Reading rest on two assumptions: (1) skilled reading always involves automatic mapping between written words and speech sounds, and (2) all children benefit from systematic instruction of phonological awareness and phonics. These assumptions are not wholly accurate, that they do not consider scientific evidence from deaf readers, and that policies based on these assumptions may be harmful to deaf chil…

  • The neural response to highly iconic signs in hearing learners and deaf signers

    Open AccessEmily M Akers, Katherine J Midgley et al.ARTICLEBrain and Language2026References: 24

    Previous ERP studies have demonstrated that hearing learners of American Sign Language (ASL) show sensitivity to sign iconicity (a resemblance between form and meaning) prior to learning any signs. Highly iconic (transparent) signs elicited greater negativity in the N400 window than non-iconic signs when participants performed a task that did not require semantic processing (detect an occasional grooming gesture). Greater negativity was interpret…

  • The Neural Network for Sign Language Comprehension

    Open AccessBrennan Terhune‐Cotter, Karen EmmoreyARTICLELanguage and Linguistics Compass2025

    Sign languages differ dramatically from spoken languages in their linguistic articulators (the hands/face vs. the vocal tract) and in how they are perceived (visually vs. auditorily), which can impact how they are processed in the brain. This review focuses on the neural network involved in sign language comprehension, from processing the initial visual input to parsing meaningful sentences. We describe how the signer's brain decodes the visual s…

  • Semantic processing of iconic signs is not automatic: Neural evidence from hearing non-signers

    Open AccessEmily M Akers, Katherine J Midgley et al.ARTICLEBilingualism Language and Cognition2025

    Iconicity facilitates learning signs, but it is unknown whether recognition of meaning from the sign form occurs automatically. We recorded ERPs to highly iconic (transparent) and non-iconic ASL signs presented to one group who knew they would be taught signs (learners) and another group with no such expectations (non-learners). Participants watched sign videos and detected an occasional grooming gesture (no semantic processing required). Before …

  • Activation of ASL signs during sentence reading for deaf readers: Evidence from eye-tracking

    Open AccessEmily Saunders, Jonathan Mirault et al.ARTICLEBilingualism Language and Cognition2025

    Bilinguals activate both of their languages as they process written words, regardless of modality (spoken or signed); these effects have primarily been documented in single word reading paradigms. We used eye-tracking to determine whether deaf bilingual readers ( n = 23) activate American Sign Language (ASL) translations as they read English sentences. Sentences contained a target word and one of the two possible prime words: a related prime whic…

  • Morphological awareness and reading skill for deaf and hearing adults

    Open AccessEmily Saunders, Haley Helms et al.ARTICLEThe Journal of Deaf Studies and…2025

    Both deaf and hearing readers use morphological awareness skills to decode and comprehend printed English. Deaf readers, for whom phonological awareness is a relative weakness while orthographic sensitivity is a strength, may have a different relationship with morphology than similarly skilled hearing readers. This study investigated the impact of various reading sub-skills—spelling, vocabulary size, morphological awareness, and phonological awar…

  • Morphological awareness and reading skill for deaf and hearing adults

    Open AccessEmily Saunders, Haley Helms et al.ARTICLEThe Journal of Deaf Studies and…2025

    When people approach the complex task of reading, they bring a variety of tools to the challenge. The average reader’s “toolbox” contains skills like vocabulary, spelling, and phonological awareness. Without easy or automatic access to the sounds of language, deaf readers often struggle with developing strong phonological awareness skills. Phonology is typically the strongest predictor of reading success for hearing readers; however, many deaf st…

  • Assessing the Effects of Sign Language Experience Versus Deafness on the Leftward Reading Span

    Open AccessKaren Emmorey, Emily M Akers et al.ARTICLECognitive Science2025References: 60

    Both deafness and sign language experience impact the distribution of visual attention, and either factor could affect reading span size , the area around fixation from which useful information is obtained. In contrast to the typical asymmetrical span (smaller on the left), deaf signers have a larger leftward span than skill‐matched hearing readers. We investigated whether this enhanced span is due to changes in visual attention associated with e…

  • The Relationship Between Community Size and Iconicity in Sign Languages

    Open AccessShiri Lev‐ari, Rose Stamp et al.ARTICLECognitive Science2025References: 70

    Communication is harder in larger communities. Past research shows that this leads larger communities to create languages that are easier to learn and use. In particular, previous research suggests that spoken languages that are used by larger communities are more sound symbolic than spoken languages used by smaller communities, presumably, because sound symbolism facilitates language acquisition and use. This study tests whether the same princip…

  • Neural associations between fingerspelling, print, and signs: An ERP priming study with deaf readers

    Open AccessBrittany Lee, Sofia E Ortega et al.ARTICLEBrain and Language2025References: 51

    Fingerspelling is a leading predictor of reading ability for deaf people who use a signed language, but few neuroimaging studies have examined how it supports reading. We used event-related potentials to investigate how fingerspelled words prime printed words. Twenty-four skilled deaf adult readers completed a Go/No-Go task while viewing printed English word targets following related and unrelated primes in one of three conditions: printed Englis…

  • Neural effects differ for learning highly iconic versus non-iconic signs in hearing adults

    Open AccessEmily M Akers, Katherine J Midgley et al.ARTICLEBilingualism Language and Cognition2024

    Little is known about the neural changes that accompany sign language learning by hearing adults. We used ERPs and a word-sign matching task to assess how learning impacted the N400 priming effect (reduced negativity for translations compared to unrelated trials). English monolinguals (N = 32) learned 100 ASL signs – half highly iconic (meaning was guessable), half non-iconic. In contrast to non-iconic signs, little learning was needed for the hi…

  • Feeling signs: Motor encoding enhances sign language learning in hearing adults

    Open AccessLaura M Morett, Mathew Cieśla et al.ARTICLEStudies in Second Language…2024

    Manual production enhances learning and recall of signs by hearing second language learners; however, the mechanisms enabling this effect are unclear. We examined whether the motor encoding (somatosensory feedback) that occurs during sign production benefits learning and whether it interacts with sign iconicity, which also enhances learning. American Sign Language (ASL) signs varying in iconicity were learned either via production (repetition) wi…

  • Neural underpinnings of sentence reading in deaf, native sign language users

    Open AccessJustyna Kotowicz, Anna Banaszkiewicz et al.ARTICLEBrain and Language2024

  • Using transitional information in sign and gesture perception

    Open AccessChris Brozdowski, Karen EmmoreyARTICLEActa Psychologica2023

    For sign languages, transitional movements of the hands are fully visible and may be used to predict upcoming linguistic input. We investigated whether and how deaf signers and hearing nonsigners use transitional information to detect a target item in a string of either pseudosigns or grooming gestures, as well as whether motor imagery ability was related to this skill. Transitional information between items was either intact (Normal videos), dig…

  • The iconic motivation for the morphophonological distinction between noun–verb pairs in American Sign Language does not reflect common human construals of objects and actions

    Open AccessJennie Pyers, Karen EmmoreyARTICLELanguage and Cognition2022

    Across sign languages, nouns can be derived from verbs through morphophonological changes in movement by (1) movement reduplication and size reduction or (2) size reduction alone. We asked whether these cross-linguistic similarities arise from cognitive biases in how humans construe objects and actions. We tested nonsigners’ sensitivity to differences in noun–verb pairs in American Sign Language (ASL) by asking MTurk workers to match images of ac…

  • Are form priming effects phonological or perceptual? Electrophysiological evidence from American Sign Language

    Open AccessGabriela Meade, Brittany Lee et al.ARTICLECognition2022

    Form priming has been used to identify and demarcate the processes that underlie word and sign recognition. The facilitation that results from the prime and target being related in form is typically interpreted in terms of pre-activation of linguistic representations, with little to no consideration for the potential contributions of increased perceptual overlap between related pairs. Indeed, isolating the contribution of perceptual similarity is…

  • Contribution of Lexical Quality and Sign Language Variables to Reading Comprehension

    Open AccessZed Sevcikova Sehyr, Karen EmmoreyARTICLEThe Journal of Deaf Studies and…2022

    The lexical quality hypothesis proposes that the quality of phonological, orthographic, and semantic representations impacts reading comprehension. In Study 1, we evaluated the contributions of lexical quality to reading comprehension in 97 deaf and 98 hearing adults matched for reading ability. While phonological awareness was a strong predictor for hearing readers, for deaf readers, orthographic precision and semantic knowledge, not phonology, …

  • New Perspectives on the Neurobiology of Sign Languages

    Open AccessKaren EmmoreyARTICLEFrontiers in Communication2021

    The first 40 years of research on the neurobiology of sign languages (1960–2000) established that the same key left hemisphere brain regions support both signed and spoken languages, based primarily on evidence from signers with brain injury and at the end of the 20th century, based on evidence from emerging functional neuroimaging technologies (positron emission tomography and fMRI). Building on this earlier work, this review focuses on what we …

  • The signed mental lexicon: Effects of phonological neighborhood density, iconicity, and childhood language experience

    Open AccessNaomi Caselli, Naomi K Caselli et al.ARTICLEJournal of Memory and Language2021

    Most of what is known about the mental lexicon comes from studies of spoken language and their written forms. Signs differ from spoken/written words in two important ways that may affect lexical recognition: their phonological composition is unique (e.g., more simultaneous than serial structure; few minimal pairs) and many signs are iconic. Using an unprimed lexical decision task in American Sign Language (ASL) and the first available estimates o…

  • Masked ERP repetition priming in deaf and hearing readers

    Open AccessKaren Emmorey, Hasianna Nopina Situmorang et al.ARTICLEBrain and Language2021

    Deaf readers provide unique insights into how the reading circuit is modified by altered linguistic and sensory input. We investigated whether reading-matched deaf and hearing readers (n = 62) exhibit different ERP effects associated with orthographic to phonological mapping (N250) or lexico-semantic processes (N400). In a visual masked priming paradigm, participants performed a go/no-go categorization task; target words were preceded by repeated…

  • The organization of the American Sign Language lexicon: Comparing one- and two-parameter ERP phonological priming effects across tasks

    Open AccessGabriela Meade, Brittany Lee et al.ARTICLEBrain and Language2021

    We used phonological priming and ERPs to investigate the organization of the lexicon in American Sign Language. Across go/no-go repetition detection and semantic categorization tasks, targets in related pairs that shared handshape and location elicited smaller N400s than targets in unrelated pairs, indicative of facilitated processing. Handshape-related targets also elicited smaller N400s than unrelated targets, but only in the repetition task. T…

  • The neural correlates for spatial language: Perspective-dependent and -independent relationships in American Sign Language and spoken English

    Open AccessKaren Emmorey, Chris Brozdowski et al.ARTICLEBrain and Language2021

    In American Sign Language (ASL) spatial relationships are conveyed by the location of the hands in space, whereas English employs prepositional phrases. Using event-related fMRI, we examined comprehension of perspective-dependent (PD) (left, right) and perspective-independent (PI) (in, on) sentences in ASL and audiovisual English (sentence-picture matching task). In contrast to non-spatial control sentences, PD sentences engaged the superior pari…

  • The ASL-LEX 2.0 Project: A Database of Lexical and Phonological Properties for 2,723 Signs in American Sign Language

    Open AccessZed Sevcikova Sehyr, Naomi Caselli et al.ARTICLEThe Journal of Deaf Studies and…2021

    ASL-LEX is a publicly available, large-scale lexical database for American Sign Language (ASL). We report on the expanded database (ASL-LEX 2.0) that contains 2,723 ASL signs. For each sign, ASL-LEX now includes a more detailed phonological description, phonological density and complexity measures, frequency ratings (from deaf signers), iconicity ratings (from hearing non-signers and deaf signers), transparency ("guessability") ratings (from non-…