Research
Publications
| Annika Schiefner, Floris Roelofsen & Beyza Sümer. 2026. Iconicity and transparency in Dutch Sign Language. Behavior Research Methods 58(87). 10.3758/s13428-026-02969-3. |
| Ortega, Gerardo, Annika Schiefner, Nia Lazarus & Pamela Perniss. 2025. A lexical database of British Sign Language (BSL) and German Sign Language (DGS): Iconicity ratings, iconic strategies, and concreteness norms. Behavior Research Methods 57(139). 10.3758/s13428-025-02660-z. |
| Trettenbrein, Patrick C., Jan Bümmerstede, Thomas A. Finkbeiner, Pia Gehlbach, Nina-Kristin Meister, Annika Schiefner, Petra B. Schumacher, Door Spruijt, Markus Steinbach & Pamela Perniss. 2025. Towards a “DGS-LEX”: A roadmap for the collaborative creation of a psycholinguistic database for German Sign Language (DGS). Linguistische Berichte 281. 91–100. 10.46771/9783967699456_5. |
| Ortega, Gerardo, Annika Schiefner & Aslı Özyürek. 2019. Hearing non-signers use their gestures to predict iconic form-meaning mappings at first exposure to signs. Cognition 191. 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.06.008. |
Conference proceedings
| Annika Schiefner, Gomèr Otterspeer, Beyza Sümer & Floris Roelofsen. 2017. The SignBeach Dataset of Dutch Sign Language (NGT) signs. In E. Efthimiou, S.-E. Fotinea, T. Hanke, J.A. Hochgesang, J. Mesch & M. Schulder (eds.), Proceedings of the 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages, 450-458. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/lrec/pub/26019.html. |
| Ortega, Gerardo, Annika Schiefner & Aslı Özyürek. 2017. Speakers’ gestures predict the meaning and perception of iconicity in signs. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howe & T. Tenbrink (eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 889–894. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2017/papers/0176/paper0176.pdf. |
Reports and dissertations
| Schiefner, Annika. 2025. Patterns of iconicity across sign languages and gestures. Cologne, DE: University of Cologne PhD thesis.
https://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/78615/. |
| Schiefner, Annika. 2019. What’s in a sign? When form features have meaning [Master’s Thesis, Radboud University].
https://theses.ubn.ru.nl/handle/123456789/7775. |
| Dessi, Marco, Henssen, Dylan, Horsman, Sophie, Meijers, Rutger, Schiefner, Annika, Schlag, Fenja, Schmitz, Luuk, & Schimanskaya, Vika. 2017. Robots against Anorexia Nervosa—An interdisciplinairy assessment of the possible use of Socially Assistive Robots in the treatment of Anorexia Nervosa. Radboud Honours Academy.
https://theses.ubn.ru.nl/handle/123456789/4608. |
Invited talks
| Date | Title | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 02/2024 | Iconicity shapes lexical similarity: The case of British and German Sign Language (A. Schiefner) | The Leiden-Birmingham lectures: Comparative Cross Modal Linguistics, Leiden, NL |
| 07/2023 | Iconicity in concrete and abstract concepts: a cross-linguistic comparison of signs and silent gestures (A. Schiefner) | From Icon to Abstraction Workshop, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK. |
| 05/2022 | When iconicity diverges -- evidence from the lexicon of two sign languages (A. Schiefner, G. Ortega, P. Perniss) | DDGS Workshop, Universität zu Köln, Köln, DE. |
Show more
| Date | Title | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 03/2022 | Iconicity in concrete and abstract concepts: a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural comparison of gestures and signs (A. Schiefner, G. Ortega, P. Perniss) | Language and Cognition Lab, University College London, London, UK |
| 06/2017 | Speakers gestures predict the meaning and perception of iconicity in signs | Nijmegen Sign Language Colloquium, Radboud University, Nijmegen, NL |
On-stage presentations
| Date | Title | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 07/2025 | Iconic or transparent? On the relationship between iconicity and transparency in Sign Language of the Netherlands (A. Schiefner, B. Sümer, F. Roelofsen) | ISGS10, Nijmegen, NL. |
| 02/2025 | Iconic but not transparent: Intricate relationships between iconicity and transparency in NGT (A. Schiefner, B. Sümer, F. Roelofsen) | Dimensions of Iconicity, Göttingen, DE. |
| 06/2024 | Embodied iconicity in sign languages (A. Schiefner, G. Ortega, P. Perniss) | IMPRS2024, Nijmegen, NL |
Show more
| Date | Title | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 05/2024 | Embodied iconicity in sign languages (A. Schiefner, G. Ortega, P. Perniss) | ILL14, Catania, Sicily, IT. |
| 07/2022 | Iconicity in concrete and abstract concepts: a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural comparison of gestures and signs (A. Schiefner, P. Perniss, G. Ortega) | ISGS9, Chicago, IL, USA |
| 05/2022 | When iconicity diverges — evidence from the lexicon of two sign languages (A. Schiefner, G. Ortega, P. Perniss) | ILL13, Paris, FR 71st StuTS, Leeuwarden, NL |
| 04/2019 | How quality of input can explain quantity effects - A study of deaf children's linguistic development | T.W.I.S.T. Conference, Leiden, NL |
| 05/2018 | Can quality of input help us understand how input matters? | 64th StuTS, Göttingen, DE |
| 05/2017 | Predictors of academic achievement in deaf children | 61st StuTS, Zurich, CH |
| 05/2016 | How form-overlap between gestures and signs influences sign comprehension in non-signers | 59th StuTS, Leipzig, DE |
| 04/2016 | A perceptual and phonetic analysis of a foreign accent in German | ULAB2016, Aberdeen, UK |
Poster presentations
| Date | Title | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 09/2023 | Iconicity in concrete and abstract concepts: A cross-linguistic comparison of silent gestures and signs (A. Schiefner, P. Perniss, G. Ortega) | GESPIN2023, Nijmegen, NL |
| 09/2022 | Comparing sign language lexica at the intersection of phonology and iconicity (A. Schiefner, G. Ortega, P. Perniss) | TISLR14, Osaka, JP |
| 09/2019 | Native and non-native signers’ performance on a sentence repetition task for Sign Language of the Netherlands (A. Schüller, A. Schiefner, E. Ormel) | TISLR13, Hamburg, DE |
Show more
| Date | Title | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 05/2019 | What's in a sign? On the perception of sublexical form-meaning units in NGT signers | FMU workshop, Radboud University, Nijmegen, NL |