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Rassili O, Michelas A, Dufour S. On the perception of stress position by French listeners: An EEG investigation. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2024; 251:105393. [PMID: 38428269 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2024.105393] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/04/2023] [Revised: 01/17/2024] [Accepted: 02/16/2024] [Indexed: 03/03/2024]
Abstract
In this EEG study, we examined the ability of French listeners to perceive and use the position of stress in a discrimination task. Event-Related-Potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants performed a same-different task. Different stimuli diverged either in one phoneme (e.g., /ʒy'ʁi/-/ʒy'ʁɔ̃/) or in stress position (e.g., /ʒy'ʁi/-/'ʒyʁi/). Although participants reached 93% of correct responses, ERP results indicated that a change in stress position was not detected while a change in one phoneme elicited a MisMatchNegativity (MMN) response. It results that in the early moments of speech processing, stimuli that are phonemically identical but that differ in stress position are perceived as being strictly similar. We concluded that the good performance observed in behavioral responses on stress position contrasts are due to attentional/decisional processes linked to discrimination tasks, and not to automatic and unconscious processes involved in stress position processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Outhmane Rassili
- Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, LPL, UMR 7309, 13100 Aix-en-Provence, France
| | - Amandine Michelas
- Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, LPL, UMR 7309, 13100 Aix-en-Provence, France
| | - Sophie Dufour
- Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, LPL, UMR 7309, 13100 Aix-en-Provence, France.
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2
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Oganian Y, Bhaya-Grossman I, Johnson K, Chang EF. Vowel and formant representation in the human auditory speech cortex. Neuron 2023; 111:2105-2118.e4. [PMID: 37105171 PMCID: PMC10330593 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2023.04.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/25/2022] [Revised: 02/08/2023] [Accepted: 04/04/2023] [Indexed: 04/29/2023]
Abstract
Vowels, a fundamental component of human speech across all languages, are cued acoustically by formants, resonance frequencies of the vocal tract shape during speaking. An outstanding question in neurolinguistics is how formants are processed neurally during speech perception. To address this, we collected high-density intracranial recordings from the human speech cortex on the superior temporal gyrus (STG) while participants listened to continuous speech. We found that two-dimensional receptive fields based on the first two formants provided the best characterization of vowel sound representation. Neural activity at single sites was highly selective for zones in this formant space. Furthermore, formant tuning is adjusted dynamically for speaker-specific spectral context. However, the entire population of formant-encoding sites was required to accurately decode single vowels. Overall, our results reveal that complex acoustic tuning in the two-dimensional formant space underlies local vowel representations in STG. As a population code, this gives rise to phonological vowel perception.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yulia Oganian
- Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, 675 Nelson Rising Lane, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA
| | - Ilina Bhaya-Grossman
- Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, 675 Nelson Rising Lane, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; University of California, Berkeley-University of California, San Francisco Graduate Program in Bioengineering, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
| | - Keith Johnson
- Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
| | - Edward F Chang
- Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, 675 Nelson Rising Lane, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
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3
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Polka L, Molnar M, Zhao TC, Masapollo M. Neurophysiological Correlates of Asymmetries in Vowel Perception: An English-French Cross-Linguistic Event-Related Potential Study. Front Hum Neurosci 2021; 15:607148. [PMID: 34149375 PMCID: PMC8209302 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.607148] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/16/2020] [Accepted: 05/03/2021] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Behavioral studies examining vowel perception in infancy indicate that, for many vowel contrasts, the ease of discrimination changes depending on the order of stimulus presentation, regardless of the language from which the contrast is drawn and the ambient language that infants have experienced. By adulthood, linguistic experience has altered vowel perception; analogous asymmetries are observed for non-native contrasts but are mitigated for native contrasts. Although these directional effects are well documented behaviorally, the brain mechanisms underlying them are poorly understood. In the present study we begin to address this gap. We first review recent behavioral work which shows that vowel perception asymmetries derive from phonetic encoding strategies, rather than general auditory processes. Two existing theoretical models-the Natural Referent Vowel framework and the Native Language Magnet model-are invoked as a means of interpreting these findings. Then we present the results of a neurophysiological study which builds on this prior work. Using event-related brain potentials, we first measured and assessed the mismatch negativity response (MMN, a passive neurophysiological index of auditory change detection) in English and French native-speaking adults to synthetic vowels that either spanned two different phonetic categories (/y/vs./u/) or fell within the same category (/u/). Stimulus presentation was organized such that each vowel was presented as standard and as deviant in different blocks. The vowels were presented with a long (1,600-ms) inter-stimulus interval to restrict access to short-term memory traces and tap into a "phonetic mode" of processing. MMN analyses revealed weak asymmetry effects regardless of the (i) vowel contrast, (ii) language group, and (iii) MMN time window. Then, we conducted time-frequency analyses of the standard epochs for each vowel. In contrast to the MMN analysis, time-frequency analysis revealed significant differences in brain oscillations in the theta band (4-8 Hz), which have been linked to attention and processing efficiency. Collectively, these findings suggest that early-latency (pre-attentive) mismatch responses may not be a strong neurophysiological correlate of asymmetric behavioral vowel discrimination. Rather, asymmetries may reflect differences in neural processing efficiency for vowels with certain inherent acoustic-phonetic properties, as revealed by theta oscillatory activity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Linda Polka
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
- Center for Research on Brain, Language, and Music, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
| | - Monika Molnar
- Department of Speech-Language Pathology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - T. Christina Zhao
- Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States
- Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States
| | - Matthew Masapollo
- Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States
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4
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Heidlmayr K, Ferragne E, Isel F. Neuroplasticity in the phonological system: The PMN and the N400 as markers for the perception of non-native phonemic contrasts by late second language learners. Neuropsychologia 2021; 156:107831. [PMID: 33753084 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107831] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/10/2020] [Revised: 12/28/2020] [Accepted: 03/17/2021] [Indexed: 02/04/2023]
Abstract
Second language (L2) learners frequently encounter persistent difficulty in perceiving certain non-native sound contrasts, i.e., a phenomenon called "phonological deafness". However, if extensive L2 experience leads to neuroplastic changes in the phonological system, then the capacity to discriminate non-native phonemic contrasts should progressively improve. Such perceptual changes should be attested by modifications at the neurophysiological level. We designed an EEG experiment in which the listeners' perceptual capacities to discriminate second language phonemic contrasts influence the processing of lexical-semantic violations. Semantic congruency of critical words in a sentence context was driven by a phonemic contrast that was unique to the L2, English (e.g.,/ɪ/-/i:/, ship - sheep). Twenty-eight young adult native speakers of French with intermediate proficiency in English listened to sentences that contained either a semantically congruent or incongruent critical word (e.g., The anchor of theship/*sheepwas let down) while EEG was recorded. Three ERP effects were found to relate to increasing L2 proficiency: (1) a left frontal auditory N100 effect, (2) a smaller fronto-central phonological mismatch negativity (PMN) effect and (3) a semantic N400 effect. No effect of proficiency was found on oscillatory markers. The current findings suggest that neuronal plasticity in the human brain allows for the late acquisition of even hard-wired linguistic features such as the discrimination of phonemic contrasts in a second language. This is the first time that behavioral and neurophysiological evidence for the critical role of neural plasticity underlying L2 phonological processing and its interdependence with semantic processing has been provided. Our data strongly support the idea that pieces of information from different levels of linguistic processing (e.g., phonological, semantic) strongly interact and influence each other during online language processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Karin Heidlmayr
- UMR 1253, iBrain, University of Tours, Inserm, Tours, France; Max-Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, the Netherlands; Laboratory CLILLAC-ARP - URP3967, Université de Paris, Paris, France; Laboratory Models, Dynamics, Corpus, CNRS/University Paris Nanterre, Paris Lumières, France.
| | - Emmanuel Ferragne
- Laboratory CLILLAC-ARP - URP3967, Université de Paris, Paris, France
| | - Frédéric Isel
- Laboratory Models, Dynamics, Corpus, CNRS/University Paris Nanterre, Paris Lumières, France
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Zhao TC, Masapollo M, Polka L, Ménard L, Kuhl PK. Effects of formant proximity and stimulus prototypicality on the neural discrimination of vowels: Evidence from the auditory frequency-following response. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2019; 194:77-83. [PMID: 31129300 PMCID: PMC6697130 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2019.05.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/26/2019] [Revised: 05/14/2019] [Accepted: 05/16/2019] [Indexed: 05/05/2023]
Abstract
Cross-language speech perception experiments indicate that for many vowel contrasts, discrimination is easier when the same pair of vowels is presented in one direction compared to the reverse direction. According to one account, these directional asymmetries reflect a universal bias favoring "focal" vowels (i.e., vowels with prominent spectral peaks formed by the convergence of adjacent formants). An alternative account is that such effects reflect an experience-dependent bias favoring prototypical exemplars of native-language vowel categories. Here, we tested the predictions of these accounts by recording the auditory frequency-following response in English-speaking listeners to two synthetic variants of the vowel /u/ that differed in the proximity of their first and second formants and prototypicality, with stimuli arranged in oddball and reversed-oddball blocks. Participants showed evidence of neural discrimination when the more-focal/less-prototypic /u/ served as the deviant stimulus, but not when the less-focal/more-prototypic /u/ served as the deviant, consistent with the focalization account.
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Affiliation(s)
- T Christina Zhao
- Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, Portage Bay Building, Box 357988, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-7988, United States.
| | - Matthew Masapollo
- Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Boston University, 635 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, United States.
| | - Linda Polka
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, 2001 McGill College, 8th Floor, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1G1, Canada.
| | - Lucie Ménard
- Department of Linguistics, University of Quebec at Montreal, 320 Sainte-Catherine East, Montreal, QC H2X 1L7, Canada.
| | - Patricia K Kuhl
- Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, Portage Bay Building, Box 357988, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-7988, United States.
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Masapollo M, Zhao TC, Franklin L, Morgan JL. Asymmetric discrimination of nonspeech tonal analogues of vowels. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 2018; 45:285-300. [PMID: 30570319 DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000603] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Directional asymmetries reveal a universal bias in vowel perception favoring extreme vocalic articulations, which lead to acoustic vowel signals with dynamic formant trajectories and well-defined spectral prominences because of the convergence of adjacent formants. The present experiments investigated whether this bias reflects speech-specific processes or general properties of spectral processing in the auditory system. Toward this end, we examined whether analogous asymmetries in perception arise with nonspeech tonal analogues that approximate some of the dynamic and static spectral characteristics of naturally produced /u/ vowels executed with more versus less extreme lip gestures. We found a qualitatively similar but weaker directional effect with 2-component tones varying in both the dynamic changes and proximity of their spectral energies. In subsequent experiments, we pinned down the phenomenon using tones that varied in 1 or both of these 2 acoustic characteristics. We found comparable asymmetries with tones that differed exclusively in their spectral dynamics, and no asymmetries with tones that differed exclusively in their spectral proximity or both spectral features. We interpret these findings as evidence that dynamic spectral changes are a critical cue for eliciting asymmetries in nonspeech tone perception, but that the potential contribution of general auditory processes to asymmetries in vowel perception is limited. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew Masapollo
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Brown University
| | - T Christina Zhao
- Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences, University of Washington
| | - Lauren Franklin
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Brown University
| | - James L Morgan
- Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Brown University
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Chevrot JP, Drager K, Foulkes P. Editors' Introduction and Review: Sociolinguistic Variation and Cognitive Science. Top Cogn Sci 2018; 10:679-695. [PMID: 30294877 DOI: 10.1111/tops.12384] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/31/2018] [Revised: 08/24/2018] [Accepted: 09/03/2018] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Sociolinguists study the interaction between language and society. Variationist sociolinguistics - the subfield of sociolinguistics which is the focus of this issue - uses empirical and quantitative methods to study the production and perception of linguistic variation. Linguistic variation refers to how speakers choose between linguistic forms that say the same thing in different ways, with the variants differing in their social meaning. For example, how frequently someone says fishin' or fishing depends on a number of factors, such as the speaker's regional and social background and the formality of the speech event. Likewise, if listeners are asked to use a rating scale make judgements about speakers who say fishin' or fishing, their ratings depend on what other social characteristics are attributed to the speaker. This issue aims to reflect the growing number of interactions that bring variationist sociolinguistics into contact of different branches of cognitive science. After presenting current trends in sociolinguistics, we identify five areas of contact between the two fields: cognitive sociolinguistics, sociolinguistic cognition, acquisition of variation, computational modeling, and a comparative approach of variation in animal communication. We then explain the benefits of interdisciplinary work: fostering the study of variability and cultural diversity in cognition; bringing together data and modeling; understanding the cognitive mechanisms through which sociolinguistic variation is processed; examining indexical meaning; exploring links between different levels of grammar; and improving methods of data collection and analysis. Finally we explain how the articles in this issue contribute to each of these benefits. We conclude by suggesting that sociolinguistics holds a strategic position for facing the challenge of building theories of language through integrating its linguistic, cognitive, and social aspects at the collective and individual levels.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Katie Drager
- Department of linguistics, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
| | - Paul Foulkes
- Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York
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Masapollo M, Polka L, Ménard L. A universal bias in adult vowel perception - By ear or by eye. Cognition 2017; 166:358-370. [PMID: 28601721 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.06.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/08/2016] [Revised: 05/03/2017] [Accepted: 06/01/2017] [Indexed: 12/29/2022]
Abstract
Speech perceivers are universally biased toward "focal" vowels (i.e., vowels whose adjacent formants are close in frequency, which concentrates acoustic energy into a narrower spectral region). This bias is demonstrated in phonetic discrimination tasks as a directional asymmetry: a change from a relatively less to a relatively more focal vowel results in significantly better performance than a change in the reverse direction. We investigated whether the critical information for this directional effect is limited to the auditory modality, or whether visible articulatory information provided by the speaker's face also plays a role. Unimodal auditory and visual as well as bimodal (auditory-visual) vowel stimuli were created from video recordings of a speaker producing variants of /u/, differing in both their degree of focalization and visible lip rounding (i.e., lip compression and protrusion). In Experiment 1, we confirmed that subjects showed an asymmetry while discriminating the auditory vowel stimuli. We then found, in Experiment 2, a similar asymmetry when subjects lip-read those same vowels. In Experiment 3, we found asymmetries, comparable to those found for unimodal vowels, for bimodal vowels when the audio and visual channels were phonetically-congruent. In contrast, when the audio and visual channels were phonetically-incongruent (as in the "McGurk effect"), this asymmetry was disrupted. These findings collectively suggest that the perceptual processes underlying the "focal" vowel bias are sensitive to articulatory information available across sensory modalities, and raise foundational issues concerning the extent to which vowel perception derives from general-auditory or speech-gesture-specific processes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew Masapollo
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, 2001 McGill College, 8th Floor, Montreal, QC H3A 1G1, Canada; Centre for Research on Brain, Language, and Music, McGill University, 3640 de la Montagne, Montreal, Quebec H3G 2A8, Canada.
| | - Linda Polka
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, 2001 McGill College, 8th Floor, Montreal, QC H3A 1G1, Canada; Centre for Research on Brain, Language, and Music, McGill University, 3640 de la Montagne, Montreal, Quebec H3G 2A8, Canada
| | - Lucie Ménard
- Département de Linguistique, Université du Québec à Montréal, Pavillon J.-A. De sève, DS-4425, 320, Sainte-Catherine Est, Montréal, QC H2X 1L7, Canada; Centre for Research on Brain, Language, and Music, McGill University, 3640 de la Montagne, Montreal, Quebec H3G 2A8, Canada
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Masapollo M, Polka L, Molnar M, Ménard L. Directional asymmetries reveal a universal bias in adult vowel perception. THE JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA 2017; 141:2857. [PMID: 28464636 DOI: 10.1121/1.4981006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/07/2023]
Abstract
Research on cross-language vowel perception in both infants and adults has shown that for many vowel contrasts, discrimination is easier when the same pair of vowels is presented in one direction compared to the reverse direction. According to one account, these directional asymmetries reflect a universal bias favoring "focal" vowels (i.e., vowels whose adjacent formants are close in frequency, which concentrates acoustic energy into a narrower spectral region). An alternative, but not mutually exclusive, account is that such effects reflect an experience-dependent bias favoring prototypical instances of native-language vowel categories. To disentangle the effects of focalization and prototypicality, the authors first identified a certain location in phonetic space where vowels were consistently categorized as /u/ by both Canadian-English and Canadian-French listeners, but that nevertheless varied in their stimulus goodness (i.e., the best Canadian-French /u/ exemplars were more focal compared to the best Canadian-English /u/ exemplars). In subsequent AX discrimination tests, both Canadian-English and Canadian-French listeners performed better at discriminating changes from less to more focal /u/'s compared to the reverse, regardless of variation in prototypicality. These findings demonstrate a universal bias favoring vowels with greater formant convergence that operates independently of biases related to language-specific prototype categorization.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew Masapollo
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, 2001 McGill College, 8th Floor, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1G1, Canada
| | - Linda Polka
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, 2001 McGill College, 8th Floor, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1G1, Canada
| | - Monika Molnar
- School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, 2001 McGill College, 8th Floor, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 1G1, Canada
| | - Lucie Ménard
- Département de Linguistique, Université du Québec à Montréal, Pavillon J.-A. De sève, DS-4425, 320, Sainte-Catherine Est, Montréal, Quebec, H2X 1L7, Canada
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Larraza S, Samuel AG, Oñederra ML. Where do dialectal effects on speech processing come from? Evidence from a cross-dialect investigation. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2017; 70:92-108. [DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2015.1124896] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
Accented speech has been seen as an additional impediment for speech processing; it usually adds linguistic and cognitive load to the listener's task. In the current study we analyse where the processing costs of regional dialects come from, a question that has not been answered yet. We quantify the proficiency of Basque–Spanish bilinguals who have different native dialects of Basque on many dimensions and test for costs at each of three levels of processing–phonemic discrimination, word recognition, and semantic processing. The ability to discriminate a dialect-specific contrast is affected by a bilingual's linguistic background less than lexical access is, and an individual's difficulty in lexical access is correlated with basic discrimination problems. Once lexical access is achieved, dialectal variation has little impact on semantic processing. The results are discussed in terms of the presence or absence of correlations between different processing levels. The implications of the results are considered for how models of spoken word recognition handle dialectal variation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Saioa Larraza
- Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, UMR 8158, CNRS–Université Paris Descartes, Paris, France
- BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia–San Sebastian, Spain
| | - Arthur G. Samuel
- BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia–San Sebastian, Spain
- IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain
- Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, New York, NY, USA
| | - Miren Lourdes Oñederra
- Department of Linguistics and Basque Studies, University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
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Bohn OS, Polka L. Fast phonetic learning in very young infants: what it shows, and what it doesn't show. Front Psychol 2014; 5:511. [PMID: 24917834 PMCID: PMC4040884 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00511] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/30/2014] [Accepted: 05/09/2014] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Ocke-Schwen Bohn
- English Degree Program and Center on Autobiographical Memory Research, Department of Psychology, Aarhus University Denmark
| | - Linda Polka
- School of Communication Sciences & Disorders, Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University Montreal, QC, Canada
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Cristia A, Seidl A, Vaughn C, Schmale R, Bradlow A, Floccia C. Linguistic processing of accented speech across the lifespan. Front Psychol 2012; 3:479. [PMID: 23162513 PMCID: PMC3492798 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00479] [Citation(s) in RCA: 47] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/31/2012] [Accepted: 10/17/2012] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
In most of the world, people have regular exposure to multiple accents. Therefore, learning to quickly process accented speech is a prerequisite to successful communication. In this paper, we examine work on the perception of accented speech across the lifespan, from early infancy to late adulthood. Unfamiliar accents initially impair linguistic processing by infants, children, younger adults, and older adults, but listeners of all ages come to adapt to accented speech. Emergent research also goes beyond these perceptual abilities, by assessing links with production and the relative contributions of linguistic knowledge and general cognitive skills. We conclude by underlining points of convergence across ages, and the gaps left to face in future work.
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