<strong>Early perception of intonation in Portuguese Sign language: A preliminary study using eye-tracking</strong>

We developed an adaptation of Frota et al.’s (2014) design to investigate, for the first time, early perception of intonation contrasts in a sign language. Using a modified version of the visual habituation paradigm, implemented with eye-tracking, we ran a pilot study with one deaf infant with limited exposure to Portuguese Sign Language (LGP), and one monolingual hearing infant, both coming from European Portuguese (EP) speaking homes. The results indicate that the new procedure can be successfully implemented to investigate deaf (and hearing) infants’ sensitivity to the LGP statement/yes-no question prosodic contrast, shortly after 6 months. Interestingly, the looking pattern differed between the infants: the deaf infant looked more to the face than to the body region, while the hearing infant exhibited the reverse pattern. However, both infants demonstrated no evidence of discrimination of the visual prosodic contrast, unlike hearing EP-learning infants, who discriminated the auditory intonation contrast at 5 months (Frota et al., 2014). The results are conjectured to follow from infants’ insufficient/lack of exposure to sign language input, as well as from the kind of phonological contrast under study. Further investigation is warranted, applying the new experimental procedure to deaf infants acquiring LGP in LGP homes.