A faster path between meaning and form? Iconicity facilitates sign recognition and production in British Sign Language

•Making iconic features salient in pictures facilitates picture–sign matching.•Iconicity facilitates phonological decisions by activating sensorimotor features.•Iconicity eliminates the disadvantage for late-learned signs in picture naming latencies.•General theories of lexical processing need to account for iconicity effects.•Embodied theories need to be more specific about processing mechanisms.