IDGS meets Gallaudet

25 September 2025

Photo: UHH/IDGS/D2L

From September 12 to 14, 2025, the annual conference of the Society for the Neurobiology of Language (SNL) took place at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. Traditionally, the conference has focused on spoken language research. However, in recent years, contributions on sign language research have also been added. This year, the conference was held, for the first time, at Gallaudet University, the only university in the world that offers its entire academic program in American Sign Language (ASL). For this reason, there were numerous contributions on sign language research this year. The IDGS (GW) and the Deafness, Language and Learning Lab (D2L, EW) were represented by Annika Herrmann, Anne Wienholz, Janika Stille, and Dominik Weitz.
In a bimodal bilingual presentation (International Sign and English) entitled “ERP correlates during sentence processing Germ Sign Language agreement verbs in deaf early child signers,” Janika Stille and Anne Wienholz presented initial findings from a joint research project between IDGS and D2L. Annika Herrmann and Agnes Villwock (Rochester Institute of Technology) presented their research on “When signs slip the mind: A corpus-based study of the tip-of-the-fingers phenomenon in German Sign Language (DGS)” on a poster. All contributions met with lively interest and received supportive feedback from the international research community. We enjoyed the time and were very happy to meet many colleagues and friends from other countries and research institutions.