Introduction Stokoe, 1960 Brentari, 1999 Sandler and Lillo-Martin, 2006 Fig. 1 Hildebrandt and Corina, 2002 Sergent et al., 1992; Poldrack et al., 1999; Kareken et al., 2000 Lurito et al., 2000; Xu et al., 2001 Seghier et al., 2004; Burton et al., 2005 Gough et al., 2005 Ojemann and Mateer, 1979 Démonet et al., 1996 Pugh et al., 1996; Lurito et al., 2000; Xu et al., 2001; Seghier et al., 2004 Eden et al., 2004 Discussion Fig. 2 MacSweeney et al., 2002b Braun et al., 2001 first Mitchell and Karchmer, 2004 Morgan and Woll, 2002 sign English Mayberry et al., 2002; Mayberry and Lock, 2003 did Mayberry and Lock (2003) Newman et al., 2002 and Fig. 2 rhymed location Materials and methods Participants p Table 1 Conrad, 1979; Allen, 1986; Holt, 1993 Mohammed et al., 2003 t p Vernon-Warden, 1996 t p Kaplan et al., 1983 t p All deaf participants reported being born profoundly deaf and audiograms obtained at the time of testing confirmed that all had a mean hearing loss greater than 92dB in the better ear over four octaves, spanning 500–4000Hz. All deaf participants encountered written English upon entering primary school, aged 4/5. Twelve of the deaf participants were native signers, having acquired BSL from their deaf, signing parents. The remaining eight deaf participants (non-native signers) had hearing parents. One native signer and one non-native signer reported attending schools which used a total communication approach, in which signs are used to support spoken English. The remaining 18 of the 20 deaf participants had attended ‘oral’ schools in which spoken English was the main form of communication. This educational approach was the norm for this generation of deaf adults in the UK, even for those who used BSL as their native language. Of the eight non-native signers, five learned BSL after leaving secondary school, aged 17 to 21. One participant learned BSL at their total communication primary school aged 4/5. Two other participants who attended oral schools reported learning BSL at school; one aged 4/5, the other aged 11. These participants will have been exposed to BSL by their deaf native signing classmates. p p p p p Stimuli n Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) Rhyme task (shared English phonology pairs) Fig. 2 Location task (shared BSL phonology pairs) Fig. 2 Stokoe, 1960 Coltheart, 1981 t p Coltheart, 1981 t p Kucera and Francis, 1967 t p t p Fig. 2 different All participants performed a picture naming pre-test before the scan session. If an unexpected label was generated, the desired English word or BSL sign (deaf participants only) was supplied. Correct naming of these items was checked again at the end of the pre-test session. Design Deaf participants performed the rhyme and location similarity judgement tasks in separate, counterbalanced runs. Hearing participants performed only the rhyme task. Each run consisted of six 30-s blocks of the experimental task (rhyme or location), alternating with six 30-s blocks of the ‘same picture?’ control task. Each run lasted 6 min. same phonology Fig. 2 fMRI parameters 2 ⁎ Talairach and Tournoux, 1988 fMRI data analysis Brammer et al., 1997; Bullmore et al., 1999, 2001; Suckling and Bullmore, 2004 Bullmore et al., 2001; Suckling and Bullmore, 2004 Group analysis Talairach and Tournoux, 1988 Brammer et al., 1997 Bullmore et al., 1999 Thirion et al. (2007) Group differences Y a b X e Y X a b e b b Conjunction analysis p Results Behavioural data Table 2 Deaf participants only F p F p F p All deaf versus all hearing participants performing the rhyme task F p F p F p F p F p fMRI data Rhyme and location similarity judgements in deaf participants only p p Figs. 3 Table 3 p p 3 X Y Z 3 X Y Z 3 X Y Z Differences between the rhyme and location tasks and the effect of age of BSL acquisition in deaf participants p p 3 X Y Z 3 X Y Z Fig. 4 3 X Y Z Fig. 5 3 X Y Z p p both 3 X Y Z 3 X Y Z Fig. 5 3 X Y Z p p 3 X Y Z 3 X Y Z p p Table 3 p p 3 X Y Z 3 X Y Z 3 X Y Z Deaf versus hearing participants performing rhyme task, matched for performance p Table 4 p p 3 X Y Z 3 X Y Z Discussion supramodal Fowler, 2004 dedicated Corina and Knapp, 2006 Neville et al., 1998; Petitto et al., 2000; Braun et al., 2001; Emmorey et al., 2002; MacSweeney et al., 2002b; Corina et al., 2003; MacSweeney et al., 2006 Mayberry et al., 2002; Mayberry and Lock, 2003 Wartenburger et al., 2003 Chee et al., 2001; Wartenburger et al., 2003 Perani et al., 2003 Tatsuno and Sakai, 2005 Thompson-Schill et al. (2005) selection Snyder et al., 2007 Fiez, 1997; Price et al., 1997, Poldrack et al., 1999; Bookheimer, 2002; Devlin et al., 2003 require Meyer and Damian, 2007 Lurito et al., 2000; Xu et al., 2001; Seghier et al., 2004 Aparicio et al., 2007 Temple et al., 2003 Braun et al., 2001; Corina et al., 2003; Emmorey et al., 2007 both Snyder et al. (2007) Lurito et al., 2000; Xu et al., 2001; Seghier et al., 2004; Snyder et al., 2007 Booth et al., 2002; Eden et al., 2004 Katzir et al., 2005 auditory Booth et al., 2004 Sterne and Goswami, 2000 Corina and Knapp, 2006 MacSweeney et al., 2002a Corina et al., 1999 Emmorey et al. (2007) X Y Z X Y Z Emmorey et al. (2007) Emmorey et al. (2007) X Y Z Corina and Knapp (2006) Gerardin et al., 2000; Hermsdorfer et al., 2001 Sutton-Spence, 2004 Hildebrandt and Corina, 2002 Brentari, 1999; Sandler and Lillo-Martin, 2006 supramodal.