Implicit causality (IC) biases, the tendency of certain verbs to elicit re-mention of either the first-mentioned noun phrase (NP1) or the second-mentioned noun phrase (NP2) from the previous clause, are important in psycholinguistic research. Understanding IC verbs and the source of their biases in signed as well as spoken languages helps elucidate whether these phenomena are language general or specific to the spoken modality. As the first of its kind, this study investigates IC biases in American Sign Language (ASL) and provides IC bias norms for over 200 verbs, facilitating future psycholinguistic studies of ASL and comparisons of spoken versus signed languages. We investigated whether native ASL signers continued sentences with IC verbs (e.g., ASL equivalents of ‘Lisa annoys Maya because…’) by mentioning NP1 (i.e., Lisa) or NP2 (i.e., Maya). We found a tendency towards more NP2-biased verbs. Previous work has found that a verb’s thematic roles predict bias direction: stimulus-experiencer verbs (e.g., ‘annoy’), where the first argument is the stimulus (causing annoyance) and the second argument is the experiencer (experiencing annoyance), elicit more NP1 continuations. Verbs with experiencer-stimulus thematic roles (e.g., ‘love’) elicit more NP2 continuations. We probed whether the trend towards more NP2-biased verbs was related to an existing claim that stimulus-experiencer verbs do not exist in sign languages. We found that stimulus-experiencer structure, while permitted, is infrequent, impacting the IC bias distribution in ASL. Nevertheless, thematic roles predict IC bias in ASL, suggesting that the thematic role-IC bias relationship is stable across languages as well as modalities.

隐含因果关系 (IC) 偏差，即某些动词倾向于从前一个子句中重新提及第一次提到的名词短语 (NP1) 或第二次提到的名词短语 (NP2)，这在心理语言学研究中很重要。了解 IC 动词及其在手语和口语中的偏见来源有助于阐明这些现象是通用语言还是特定于口语模态。作为同类研究中的第一个，这项研究调查了美国手语 (ASL) 中的 IC 偏差，并为 200 多个动词提供了 IC 偏差规范，有助于未来对 ASL 的心理语言学研究以及口语与手语的比较。我们通过提及 NP1（即 Lisa）或 NP2（即 Maya）来调查本土 ASL 手语者是否继续使用 IC 动词（例如，ASL 等同于“Lisa annoys Maya because...”）的句子。我们发现有更多偏向 NP2 的动词的趋势。以前的工作发现，动词的主题角色可以预测偏见方向：刺激体验者动词（例如，“烦恼”），其中第一个参数是刺激（引起烦恼），第二个参数是体验者（体验烦恼），引出更多NP1 延续。具有体验者-刺激主题角色的动词（例如，“爱”）会引发更多的 NP2 延续。我们探讨了更多偏向 NP2 的动词的趋势是否与现有的主张有关，即刺激体验者动词在手语中不存在。我们发现刺激体验者结构虽然允许，但并不常见，会影响 ASL 中的 IC 偏差分布。然而，主题角色预测 ASL 中的 IC 偏见，这表明主题角色-IC 偏见关系在跨语言和模式之间是稳定的。