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Neural Tracking of Czech Sign Language in Adult Beginning Learners: A Longitudinal EEG Study
Poster Session A, Wednesday, September 30, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm, Wangari Maathai
Michaela Svoboda1,2, Maroš Filip1,2, Kateřina Chládková1,2; 1Charles University, Faculty of Arts, 2Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences
Neural tracking, the alignment of low-frequency neural activity with the temporal structure of linguistic input, is considered a core mechanism supporting speech processing and language acquisition (Obleser & Keyser, 2019).While neural tracking is well established for spoken language, far less is known about whether similar mechanisms operate for visual languages such as sign languages, particularly during early stages of learning. The present contribution reports the first results of an ongoing longitudinal EEG study investigating cortical tracking of Czech Sign Language (CSL) in adult beginning learners and sign-naïve controls, and testing whether early learners differ from controls in attention to and neural tracking of sign language. EEG was recorded from 19 beginning CSL learners (18 female, mean age = 20.0 years) who have completed an average of 15.2 hours of CSL instruction and 21 sign-naive controls (19 f, mean age = 20.0) while they viewed 14 naturalistic 1-minute narratives in CSL produced by Deaf native signers. Neural tracking was quantified using a backward multivariate temporal response function (mTRF), relating EEG signals to the temporal structure of the visual stimulus, using the Instantaneous Visual Change (IVC) metric (Brookshire et al., 2017). Tracking strength was assessed in delta (0.2–4 Hz) and theta (4–8 Hz) frequency bands following previous studies on sign language (Brookshire et al, 2017; Brookshire et al., 202; Rivolta et al, 2025). Attentional engagement was quantified by alpha-band (8–12 Hz) power suppression, and behavioral attention was assessed using a recognition task following each narrative. In the recognition task, CSL learners had significantly greater accuracy than controls, indicating greater attentional engagement; the learners’ mean recognition accuracy was 89% (95% CI = 83.7–93.8), and the controls’ mean accuracy was 78% (95% CI = 73.0–82.8). EEG results revealed significantly stronger alpha suppression in learners compared to controls, consistent with increased attentional effort during sign language processing. The LME for alpha power, yielded a significant main effect of Group: alpha power was smaller in the Learner group than in Controls. The Learners’ estimated mean was 21.46 dB (95% CI = 19.94–22.99 dB), and the Controls’estimated mean was 23.52 dB (95% CI = 22.11–24.92 dB; values estimated for central channels and the central value of the z-scored accuracy). In contrast, neural tracking of CSL, as measured by mTRF, did not differ between learners and controls in either frequency band. Bayesian model comparison provided very strong evidence in favor of the null hypothesis, indicating no group difference in neural tracking despite enhanced attention and behavioral performance in learners. Our findings suggest that increased attentional engagement alone is not sufficient to induce enhanced cortical tracking of sign language. This dissociation supports accounts that link cortical tracking to learned temporal regularities and predictive processing, rather than to attentional allocation per se (Obleser & Kayser, 2019; Molinaro, 2025). Ongoing work (also presented at the conference) will reveal whether and at what stage the strength and accuracy of neural tracking of sign language improves, and whether late learners can achieve native-like sign-language tracking.
Topic Areas: Signed Language and Gesture, Language Development/Acquisition