British researchers have found that when people sign and move their lips at the same time, the signs apparently are mentally processed separately from the lip movements. How did the researchers find this out? They showed test subjects pictures and had them sign what was in the pictures; then they had them interpret print words into signs. The mistakes made by the people in the study (such as signing banana when the picture is an apple, or seeing the word apple and mouthing/signing banana) indicated that lip movements are unconnected to the signs.
I sign and speak at the same time, being acquired deaf, it may well be quite slow, as it takes time for me to take BSL back into English but then the English is not a problem for me anyway. I am assured the lip synch and speech and sign is the same. I doubt it is BSL at the end of it, more a direct ‘mimic’ of spoken English.
The problem occurs with GRAMMAR. BSL has to be translated properly back into English first to make sense to me. I think if you are trying to lip-synch BSL as it is signed and with that ‘grammar’ then that is error prone because of constant rethinking TWICE and as you sign.
I work out the English first, THEN sign, not sign and try to correct as I go along, then the rest follows fairly easily, albeit as I said not being natural signer it can come over slow. Obviously I have to reject the BSL signing grammar straight away. SORRY !!! but communication is essential, and I have a hearing child who has to understand too, and ONLY speech.
I don’t think cultural signing is ever possible with acquired deaf, so I never tried for that anyway. They have to take my communication a la Sign English, or even spoken and captioned.
Interesting information. My thoughts, I think that, yes they are unrelated and I don’t move my move in English when I sighn because the two languages conflict. However, I do use ASL mouth movements and if I’m singing in a ‘contact’ or ‘SEE’ or finger spell I mouth the word because I feel it my help the other person watching me because the focus is not always my hands. Sometimes it’s my expressions, sometimes my mouth, sometimes my signs, altogether it makes a complete picture.