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The Displacement-Velocity Dissociation in Sign Language Learning: Kinematic Signatures of Event Structure in Novice ÖGS Signers

Paper · 2026 · Evguenia A. Malaia, Julia Krebs, Eric Harbour et al.

Summary

Adult sign language learners must master both where a sign moves and how its motion unfolds over time. This study asks whether beginners in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS) acquire the kinematic contrast between telic (bounded) and atelic (unbounded) verbs. The Event Visibility Hypothesis predicts this contrast, and fluent Deaf signers produce it. Eight hearing novices and six proficient Deaf signers produced 71 verbs while being recorded with 300 Hz optical motion capture. Learners imitated video models. The authors compared duration, path length, peak velocity, sample entropy of velocity, and a spatiotemporal index (STI) using linear mixed-effects models. Learners matched the experts in three ways: the relative path-length difference between verb classes, spatial consistency across repetitions, and peak speed. However, their duration contrast between telic and atelic verbs was much weaker, and their within-sign velocity profiles were more irregular, with higher entropy. Spatial form therefore appears to be acquired before temporal structure. This suggests that velocity patterning inside a sign is itself a grammatical target, which matters for sign language teaching, assessment, and motion-based computational modelling.

Key points

  • Participants and stimuli: 8 hearing adult learners with 6–12 weeks of ÖGS classes (1.5 h per week) were compared with 6 Deaf fluent signers. The stimuli were 71 verbs (35 telic, 36 atelic) taken from the proficient-signer corpus of Krebs et al. (2025).
  • Recording setup: A 12-camera Qualisys infrared system ran at 300 Hz alongside synchronized 2D video. Data were filtered with a 25 Hz Butterworth low-pass filter and processed with Visual3D inverse kinematics.
  • What learners got right: Their relative difference in path length between bounded and unbounded verbs matched that of the experts. Their STI (spatial consistency across trials) and peak velocity were comparable to proficient signers.
  • What learners got wrong: Their duration difference between verb types was significantly smaller than the experts'. Their sample entropy was elevated, meaning less structured velocity profiles within individual signs. Total path length did not differ significantly by verb type or group.
  • Interpretation: The results support separate learning trajectories for gross spatial patterning and fine temporal control, in line with L2 speech findings (Flege) and staged motor-learning models (Fitts & Posner).

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓Purdue University West LafayetteWest Lafayette · United States23 works · 1,417 citations🎓University of AlabamaTuscaloosa · United States6 works · 403 citations🎓University of SalzburgSalzburg · Austria2 works · 3 citations

 Fields, topics and concepts

📚 Shelves 6The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Computer Science · 16,667 worksPsychology · 1,552 worksDevelopmental and Educational Psychology · 499 worksNeuroscience · 165 worksCognitive Neuroscience · 164 worksHuman-Computer Interaction · 141 works

Cite

Cite as Evguenia A. Malaia, Julia Krebs, Eric Harbour, Julia Martetschläger, Hermann Schwameder, Dietmar Roehm and Ronnie B. Wilbur. 2026. The Displacement-Velocity Dissociation in Sign Language Learning: Kinematic Signatures of Event Structure in Novice ÖGS Signers. Proceedings of the LREC 2026 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Language in Motion.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.63317/2r4douivdpjm

@inproceedings{malaia2026displacement,
  title = {{The Displacement-Velocity Dissociation in Sign Language Learning: Kinematic Signatures of Event Structure in Novice ÖGS Signers}},
  author = {Evguenia A. Malaia, Julia Krebs, Eric Harbour, Julia Martetschläger, Hermann Schwameder, Dietmar Roehm and Ronnie B. Wilbur},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the LREC 2026 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Language in Motion},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.63317/2r4douivdpjm},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.63317/2r4douivdpjm}
}

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