Sound-sized segments are significant for Mandarin speakers

The influence of induced moods on aging of phonological encoding in spoken word production: an ERP study

This study investigated the influence of induced mood on the phonological encoding involved in Chinese spoken word production with a picture-word inference task while concurrently recorded electrophysiological signals. In the experiment, young and older participants watched videos for inducing positive, negative, or neutral mood, and then they were instructed to name target picture while ignoring phonologically related or unrelated distractor words. A phonological facilitation effect was observed in young adults but not in older adults, suggesting an age-related decline of phonological encoding. Both groups showed an inhibition effect in negative mood but not in positive mood, suggesting that speakers have different processing styles in different moods. ERP data revealed a phonological effect around the time window of 250-350 ms in both groups. Meanwhile, young adults showed a phonological effect around 350-450 ms in negative mood and positive mood which may reflect self-monitoring in speech production. We suggest that the former effect may reflect phonological encoding while the latter reflects self-monitoring of internal syllables or phonemes. Furthermore, induced moods influence the phonological effect in older and young adults differently. Behavioral and ERP results provide consistent evidence for the aging decline of phonological encoding in spoken word production.

A dataset of behavioral measures on Chinese word production in picture naming

Most studies of language production have been conducted with speakers of alphabetic languages, but relatively little research has examined languages with non-alphabetic scripts, such as Chinese. Moreover, most work on language word production has investigated phonological output processing (i.e., speaking), whereas comparatively little research has focused on orthographic output, such as writing and typing. Work on non-alphabetic languages and/or written production is particularly promising, given that it speaks to universalities vs. specificity in terms of architectures and mechanisms underlying language processing across all world languages and modalities. The current article reports a dataset of word production in Chinese with spoken and written responses, which includes reaction times of 193,851 trials of naming 403 pictures obtained from 667 participants across 23 Chinese word production experiments. All data were collected in the same experimental environment and from participants with relatively homogenous characteristics, using the same protocols and parameters. The dataset enables researchers to explore how Chinese speakers produce spoken and/or written words, and to identify language-specific features underlying word production.

Tonal and syllabic encoding in overt Cantonese Chinese speech production: An ERP study

This study was conducted to investigate how syllables and lexical tones are processed in Cantonese speech production using the picture-word interference task with concurrent recording of event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Cantonese-speaking participants were asked to name aloud individually presented pictures and ignore an accompanying auditory word distractor. The target and distractor either shared the same word-initial syllable with the same tone (Tonal-Syllable related), the same word-initial syllable without the same tone (Atonal-Syllable related), the same tone only (Tone alone related), or were phonologically unrelated. Participants' naming responses were faster, relative to an unrelated control, when the target and distractor shared the same tonal- or atonal-syllable but null effect was found in the Tone alone related condition. The mean ERP amplitudes (per each 100-ms time window) were subjected to stimulus-locked (i.e., time-locked to stimulus onset) and response-locked (i.e., time-locked to response onset) analyses. Significant differences between related and unrelated ERP waves were similarly observed in both Tonal-Syllable related and Atonal-Syllable related conditions in the time window of 400-500 ms post-stimulus. However, distinct ERP effects were observed in these two phonological conditions within the 500-ms pre-response period. In addition, null effects were found in the Tone alone related condition in both stimulus-locked and response-locked analyses. These results suggest that in Cantonese spoken word production, the atonal syllable of the target is retrieved first and then associated with the target lexical tone, consistent with the view that tone has an important role to play at a late stage of phonological encoding in tonal language production.

Sensorimotor Adaptation to Formant-Shifted Auditory Feedback Is Predicted by Language-Specific Factors in L1 and L2 Speech Production

Auditory feedback plays an important role in the long-term updating and maintenance of speech motor control; thus, the current study explored the unresolved question of how sensorimotor adaptation is predicted by language-specific and domain-general factors in first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) production. Eighteen English-L1 speakers and 22 English-L2 speakers performed the same sensorimotor adaptation experiments and tasks, which measured language-specific and domain-general abilities. The experiment manipulated the language groups (English-L1 and English-L2) and experimental conditions (baseline, early adaptation, late adaptation, and end). Linear mixed-effects model analyses indicated that auditory acuity was significantly associated with sensorimotor adaptation in L1 and L2 speakers. Analysis of vocal responses showed that L1 speakers exhibited significant sensorimotor adaptation under the early adaptation, late adaptation, and end conditions, whereas L2 speakers exhibited significant sensorimotor adaptation only under the late adaptation condition. Furthermore, the domain-general factors of working memory and executive control were not associated with adaptation/aftereffects in either L1 or L2 production, except for the role of working memory in aftereffects in L2 production. Overall, the study empirically supported the hypothesis that sensorimotor adaptation is predicted by language-specific factors such as auditory acuity and language experience, whereas general cognitive abilities do not play a major role in this process.

Investigation of Mandarin Word Production in Children and Adults: Evidence from Phonological Priming with Non-words

Using a cross-modal picture-word interference (PWI) task, we examined phonological representations and encoding in Mandarin-speaking children and adults. Pictures of monosyllabic words were presented visually, with auditory primes presented before, concurrent with, or after the picture's appearance (SOA -200, -100, 0, +150). Primes were related to the targets in terms of Onset, Rhyme, Tone, Onset and Tone, Rhyme and Tone, or were unrelated. The rhymes of target words were counterbalanced between simple and complex structures to examine effects of rhyme complexity. Twenty Mandarin-speaking adults (aged 20;3 to 23;10), 20 school-age children (aged 9;1 to 10;11) and 20 preschoolers (aged 5;0 to 5;11) were asked to name the pictures as quickly as possible while ignoring the primes played over a headset. The results showed that adults exhibited consistent Onset and Onset-Tone priming effects across later SOAs, while the older children (9- to 10-year-olds) exhibited Onset, Rhyme, Onset-Tone and Rhyme-Tone priming effects across later SOAs. The younger children (5-year-olds), in contrast, exhibited Rhyme and Rhyme-Tone priming effects at the earliest SOA. For both groups of children, Rhyme and Rhyme-Tone priming effects were complexity-dependent. Our findings suggest that the phonological representations of Mandarin speakers develop from holistic units into those with an onset-based structure. Moreover, an incremental processing pattern at the sub-syllabic level is gradually developed around the age of 9 or 10, though susceptibility to holistic phonological similarity is retained to some degree.

Phonological Preparation in Korean: Phoneme, or Syllable or Another Unit?

With three experiments, the present study investigated the primary phonological preparation (PP) unit in spoken word production in Korean. Adopting the form preparation paradigm, 23 native Korean speakers named pictures in homogenous or heterogenous lists. In homogenous lists, the names of the pictures shared the same initial phoneme (Experiment 1), initial consonant + vowel (i.e., CV) body (Experiment 2), or initial consonant + vowel + consonant (CVC) syllable (Experiment 3); and in heterogenous lists, the names did not share any phonological components systematically. Compared to naming pictures in heterogenous lists, participants' naming speed was significantly faster when the initial body or the initial syllable of target names was shared. However, this form preparation effect was not shown in Experiment 1, when only the initial phoneme was shared. These results suggested that the body serves as the primary PP unit in Korean, that is, native Korean speakers tend to plan spoken words in a body-coda fashion, probably due to a joint contribution from the strong prevalence of the CV structure and early literacy instructional approach.

Database of word-level statistics for Mandarin Chinese (DoWLS-MAN)

In this article we present the Database of Word-Level Statistics for Mandarin Chinese (DoWLS-MAN). The database addresses the lack of agreement in phonological syllable segmentation specific to Mandarin by offering phonological features for each lexical item according to 16 schematic representations of the syllable (8 with tone and 8 without tone). Those lexical statistics that differ per phonological word and nonword due to changes in syllable segmentation are of the variant category and include subtitle lexical frequency, phonological neighborhood density measures, homophone density, and network science measures. The invariant characteristics consist of each items' lexical tone, phonological transcription, and syllable structure among others. The goal of DoWLS-MAN is to provide researchers both the ability to choose stimuli that are derived from a segmentation schema that supports an existing model of Mandarin speech processing, and the ability to choose stimuli that allow for the testing of hypotheses on phonological segmentation according to multiple schemas. In an exploratory analysis we illustrate how multiple schematic representations of the phonological mental lexicon can aid in hypothesis generation, specifically in terms of phonological processing when reading Chinese orthography. Users of the database can search among over 92,000 words, over 1600 out-of-vocabulary Chinese characters, and 4300 phonological nonwords according to either Chinese orthography, pinyin, or ASCII phonetic script. Users can also generate a list of phonological words and nonwords according to user-defined ranges and categories of lexical characteristics. DoWLS-MAN is available to the public for search or download at https://dowls.site .

Word frequency effect in written production: Evidence from ERPs and neural oscillations

It has been widely documented that word frequency (WF) modulates language processing in various input and output modalities. WF effect has also been reported in the domain of written production; however, how WF affects written production is a controversial issue. The present study attempts to investigate the time course of and neural oscillation underlying the WF effect in handwritten production. Participants were asked to handwrite pictures names of high versus low WF, while concurrently recording EEG. EEG trials were extracted time-locked to picture onsets and then submitted to event-related potential analysis and time-frequency analysis. WF affected ERPs in the time windows of around 98-160 and 282-360 ms after picture onsets. More importantly, WF modulated the evoked and induced theta-band (4-8 Hz) neural oscillations in the time window of around 36-240 and 244-472 ms, respectively. Considering the time course of language production and the role of theta-band oscillation in long-term memory retrieval, we suggest that the two stages of the WF effect, respectively, reflect conceptual preparation and retrieval of orthographic word-forms in written production.

Parallel Processing of Semantics and Phonology in Spoken Production: Evidence from Blocked Cyclic Picture Naming and EEG

Spoken language production involves lexical-semantic access and phonological encoding. A theoretically important question concerns the relative time course of these two cognitive processes. The predominant view has been that semantic and phonological codes are accessed in successive stages. However, recent evidence seems difficult to reconcile with a sequential view but rather suggests that both types of codes are accessed in parallel. Here, we used ERPs combined with the "blocked cyclic naming paradigm" in which items overlapped either semantically or phonologically. Behaviorally, both semantic and phonological overlap caused interference relative to unrelated baseline conditions. Crucially, ERP data demonstrated that the semantic and phonological effects emerged at a similar latency (∼180 msec after picture onset) and within a similar time window (180-380 msec). These findings suggest that access to phonological information takes place at a relatively early stage during spoken planning, largely in parallel with semantic processing.

Behavioural evidence for segments as subordinate units in Chinese spoken word production: The form-preparation paradigm revisited

It is widely acknowledged that phonemic segments are primary phonological units, processed serially, in spoken word production of Germanic languages. However, evidence for a behavioural effect of single-segment overlap on Chinese spoken word production is lacking. The current study adopted the form-preparation paradigm to investigate the effects of segment predictability and segment repetition separately, which were mixed in previous studies. Native Mandarin Chinese speakers named pictures in the following conditions: predictable, unpredictable, and no segment repetition. Different positions in words (i.e., the onset and the rhyme) were examined at the same time. Results revealed a facilitation effect of onset predictability masked by an inhibition tendency of onset repetition, indicating Chinese speakers' ability to prepare the predictable onset. In contrast, rhyme predictability showed a non-significant effect. This pattern of results did not change no matter whether the conditions of unpredictable onset repetition and unpredictable rhyme repetition were mixed in the same context (Experiment 1) or extracted from different blocked contexts (Experiment 2). The finding provides essential support to the claim that phonemic segments are functionally engaged in Chinese spoken word production, and thus adds original evidence to the universal aspect of spoken word production.

Phonological network fluency identifies phonological restructuring through mental search

We investigated network principles underlying mental search through a novel phonological verbal fluency task. Post exclusion, 95 native-language Mandarin speakers produced as many items that differed by a single lexical tone as possible within one minute. Their verbal productions were assessed according to several novel graded fluency measures, and network science measures that accounted for the structure, cohesion and interconnectedness of lexical items. A multivariate regression analysis of our participants' language backgrounds included their mono- or multi-lingual status, English proficiency, and fluency in other Chinese languages/dialects. Higher English proficiency predicted lower error rates and greater interconnectedness, while higher fluency in other Chinese languages/dialects revealed lower successive similarity and lower network coherence. This inverse relationship between English and other Chinese languages/dialects provides evidence of the restructuring of the phonological mental lexicon.

Syllables are Retrieved before Segments in the Spoken Production of Mandarin Chinese: An ERP Study

Languages may differ in terms of the functional units of word-form encoding used in spoken word production. It is widely accepted that segments are the primary units used in Indo-European languages. However, it is controversial what the functional units (syllables or segments) in Chinese spoken word production are. In the present study, Mandarin Chinese speakers named pictures while ignoring distractor words presented simultaneously, which shared atonal syllables, bodies or rhymes, or were unrelated with the name of the target pictures. Behavioral results showed that naming latencies in the 3 phonologically-related conditions were significantly shorter than those associated with the unrelated condition. EEG data indicated that the syllable-related condition modulated event-related potentials (ERPs) in a time window of 320–500 ms, the body-related condition modulated ERPs from 370–420 ms, while the rhyme-related condition modulated ERPs from 400–450 ms. The starting points for evident syllable, body, and rhyme priming effects were 322 ms, 368 ms, and 408 ms (by the Guthrie & Buchwald method) or 340 ms, 372 ms and 403 ms (by the jackknife procedure), respectively. Our findings provide a relative temporal course of syllable and segment encoding in Chinese spoken naming: Syllables are retrieved before segments, and constitute the primary processing units during the early stage of word-form encoding. Furthermore, segments and their order are retrieved incrementally from left to right when producing Chinese spoken words.

Tone slips in Cantonese: Evidence for early phonological encoding

This article examines speech errors in Cantonese with the aim of fleshing out a larger speech production architecture for encoding phonological tone. A corpus was created by extracting 2462 speech errors, including 668 tone errors, from audio recordings of natural conversations. The structure of these errors was then investigated in order to distinguish two contemporary approaches to tone in speech production. In the tonal frames account, tone is encoded like metrical stress, represented in abstract structural frames for a word. Because tone cannot be mis-selected in tonal frames, tone errors are expected to be rare and non-contextual, as observed with stress. An alternative is that tone is actively selected in phonological encoding like phonological segments. This approach predicts that tone errors will be relatively common and exhibit the contextual patterns observed with segments, like perseveration and anticipation. In our corpus, tone errors are the second most common type of error, and the majority of errors exhibit contextual patterns that parallel segmental errors. Building on prior research, a two-stage model of phonological tone encoding is proposed, following the patterns seen in tone errors: Tone is phonologically selected concurrently with segments, but then sequentially assigned after segments to a syllable.

The role of orthography in second-language spoken word production: Evidence from Tibetan Chinese bilinguals

Evidence suggests that spoken language production involves involuntary access to orthographic representations, both in languages with alphabetic and non-alphabetic scripts. An unexplored question is whether the role of orthography varies as a function of the language being native or non-native to the individual. Native (L1) and non-native (L2) languages differ in important aspects, that is, lexical representations in L2 might be less well established, but acquired at least partly via reading, and these unique features of non-native languages may contribute to a fundamental difference in how spelling and sound interact in production. We investigated an orthographic impact on spoken production with Tibetan Chinese bilinguals who named coloured line drawings of objects with Chinese adjective–noun phrases. Colour and object names were orthographically related or unrelated. Even though none of the participants were aware of the orthographic manipulation, orthographic overlap generated a facilitatory effect. In conjunction with earlier findings from native speakers on the identical task, we conclude that orthographic information is activated in spoken word production regardless of whether the response language is native or non-native.

Abnormal neural response to phonological working memory demands in persistent developmental stuttering

Persistent developmental stuttering is a neurological disorder that commonly manifests as a motor problem. Cognitive theories, however, hold that poorly developed cognitive skills are the origins of stuttering. Working memory (WM), a multicomponent cognitive system that mediates information maintenance and manipulation, is known to play an important role in speech production, leading us to postulate that the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying stuttering may be associated with a WM deficit. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we aimed to elucidate brain mechanisms in a phonological WM task in adults who stutter and controls. A right-lateralized compensatory mechanism for a deficit in the rehearsal process and neural disconnections associated with the central executive dysfunction were found. Furthermore, the neural abnormalities underlying the phonological WM were independent of memory load. This study demonstrates for the first time the atypical neural responses to phonological WM in PWS, shedding new light on the underlying cause of stuttering.

Syllable retrieval precedes sub-syllabic encoding in Cantonese spoken word production

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the time course of syllabic and sub-syllabic processing in Cantonese spoken word production by using the picture-word interference task. Cantonese-speaking participants were asked to name individually presented pictures aloud and ignore an auditory word distractor. The targets and distractors were either phonologically related (i.e., sharing two identical word-initial phonemes) or unrelated. In Experiment 1, the target syllables were all consonant-vowel (CV)-structured. The phonological distractor was either a CV syllable (i.e., Full Syllable Overlap) or a CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) syllable (i.e., Sub-syllable Overlap). Relative to the unrelated control, Full Syllable Overlap distractors facilitated naming in all stimuli onset asynchronies (SOAs) (-175, 0, or +175 ms) whereas Sub-syllable Overlap distractors exhibited facilitation only at 0-ms and +175-ms SOAs. Experiment 2 adopted a similar design to examine the possible influence of syllabic structure similarity on the results of Experiment 1. The target syllables were all CVC-structured. The phonological distractor was either a CVC (i.e., Syllable-structure Consistent) or CV (i.e., Syllable-structure Inconsistent) syllable. Comparable priming was observed between the two distractor conditions across the three SOAs. These results indicated that an earlier priming effect was observed with full syllable overlap than sub-syllabic overlap when the degree of segmental overlap was held constant (Experiment 1). The earlier syllable priming observed in Experiment 1 could not be attributed to the effect of syllabic-structure (Experiment 2), thereby suggesting that the syllable unit is important in Cantonese and is retrieved earlier than sub-syllabic components during phonological encoding.

Probing the Timing Recruitment of Broca's Area in Speech Production for Mandarin Chinese: A TMS Study

Although Broca’s area is widely recognized to play an important role in speech production, neuroscientists still debate on its timing recruitment across different languages. In order to investigate the precise time course of phonological encoding for Mandarin Chinese, we applied real triple-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (tpTMS) and sham tpTMS within Broca’s area at five different time windows respectively (150 ms, 225 ms, 300 ms, 400 ms and 500 ms) in picture naming task in Mandarin Chinese. To exclude unspecific TMS effects and to make sure that the effects observed in the study were really due to stimulation at Broca’s area, we also conducted a control experiment by a different group of subjects. Significant increases in reaction times (RTs) were observed when real TMS stimulation at Broca’s area was applied at 225 ms, 300 ms and 400 ms time windows with a peak at 225 ms, compared with sham TMS stimulation at other time windows. Our findings support the hypothesis that the phonological encoding in speech production for Chinese language may approximately start from 200 ms and end around 400 ms post target onset, a little earlier than that from 355 ms to 455 ms for Indo-European languages.

Primary phonological planning units in spoken word production are language-specific: Evidence from an ERP study

It is widely acknowledged in Germanic languages that segments are the primary planning units at the phonological encoding stage of spoken word production. Mixed results, however, have been found in Chinese, and it is still unclear what roles syllables and segments play in planning Chinese spoken word production. In the current study, participants were asked to first prepare and later produce disyllabic Mandarin words upon picture prompts and a response cue while electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded. Each two consecutive pictures implicitly formed a pair of prime and target, whose names shared the same word-initial atonal syllable or the same word-initial segments, or were unrelated in the control conditions. Only syllable repetition induced significant effects on event-related brain potentials (ERPs) after target onset: a widely distributed positivity in the 200- to 400-ms interval and an anterior positivity in the 400- to 600-ms interval. We interpret these to reflect syllable-size representations at the phonological encoding and phonetic encoding stages. Our results provide the first electrophysiological evidence for the distinct role of syllables in producing Mandarin spoken words, supporting a language specificity hypothesis about the primary phonological units in spoken word production.

Dutch-Cantonese Bilinguals Show Segmental Processing during Sinitic Language Production

This study addressed the debate on the primacy of syllable vs. segment (i.e., phoneme) as a functional unit of phonological encoding in syllabic languages by investigating both behavioral and neural responses of Dutch-Cantonese (DC) bilinguals in a color-object picture naming task. Specifically, we investigated whether DC bilinguals exhibit the phonemic processing strategy, evident in monolingual Dutch speakers, during planning of their Cantonese speech production. Participants named the color of colored line-drawings in Cantonese faster when color and object matched in the first segment than when they were mismatched (e.g., 藍駱駝, /laam4/ /lok3to4/, “blue camel;” 紅饑駝, /hung4/ /lok3to4/, “red camel”). This is in contrast to previous studies in Sinitic languages that did not reveal such phoneme-only facilitation. Phonemic overlap also modulated the event-related potentials (ERPs) in the 125–175, 200–300, and 300–400 ms time windows, suggesting earlier ERP modulations than in previous studies with monolingual Sinitic speakers or unbalanced Sinitic-Germanic bilinguals. Conjointly, our results suggest that, while the syllable may be considered the primary unit of phonological encoding in Sinitic languages, the phoneme can serve as the primary unit of phonological encoding, both behaviorally and neurally, for DC bilinguals. The presence/absence of a segment onset effect in Sinitic languages may be related to the proficiency in the Germanic language of bilinguals.

On the time course of lexical stress priming in speech production: Behavioral and ERPs evidence from a free-stress language

The goal of the present research was to study the time course of lexical stress encoding in a free-stress language with unpredictable stress. To this aim we measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during lexical priming. Participants named pictures bearing either the dominant or non-dominant stress pattern, and preceded by either a congruent or an incongruent word prime (e.g., CInema-FRAgola'cinema-strawberry' vs. benZIna-FRAgola'petrol-strawberry'). Behavioral results show that participants were slower in naming targets that had the same stress pattern as the prime, and were also faster in producing words with the dominant stress pattern in the language. The electrophysiological results show that both the effects are compatible with the time course of phonological encoding in speech production. Surprisingly, a dominant stress effect occurred in the ERPs elicited by the primes, with a larger positivity for non-dominant stress words in a 150-250ms time-window. The pattern of results indicates that during speech production: a) the system is sensitive to the stress patterns distribution; b) the automatic pre-activation of a metrical frame may interfere with the phonological encoding of a to-be-uttered word.

The primacy of abstract syllables in Chinese word production

Convergent evidence suggests that syllables play a primary and distinctive role in the phonological phase of Mandarin Chinese word production. Specifically, syllables are selected before other phonological components and guide subsyllabic encoding. The proximity of phonological syllables to word representations in Chinese languages ensures that they are also activated automatically by word perception. Therefore, in contrast to Indo-European languages, syllables but not necessarily subsyllabic components such as initial consonants can be perceptually primed in production. We tested this prediction in 2 masked-priming experiments. To isolate relevant phonological activation originating in primes, we used single character masked primes whose corresponding tones and lexical meanings always differed from those of the targets' first morphemes. Related primes potentially activated the atonal first syllables or the first consonants of target words. To strongly engage production-specific processes, we used pictures as prompts for disyllabic target words. Facilitation relative to unrelated controls was observed only in the syllable sharing condition. If anything, sharing of initial consonants had a negative valence, perhaps indicative of competition among similar coactivated words or syllables. These findings corroborate the view that abstract syllables are the first selected, proximate phonological units in Chinese word production, and that phonemic segments play a subordinate role. (PsycINFO Database Record

Distinct representations of syllables and phonemes in Chinese production: Evidence from fMRI adaptation

Existing linguistic theories have converged on the fundamental role of syllable and phoneme as the phonological production units that drive articulation in most alphabetic languages, while much remains controversial concerning the logographic Chinese because there is no conclusive evidence of the neural correlates of syllabic and phonemic processing during Chinese speech production. Here, fMRI adaptation paradigm was used to explore the possibility of distinctive neural representations of phonemes and syllables when native Chinese speakers pronounced Chinese pseudowords. We found that bilateral basal ganglia (BG) exhibited evident neural adaptation effect for phonemic repetition, indicating independent neural representation of phonemes in the speech production network in Chinese speakers. Moreover, neural adaptation effect for syllabic repetition was found in bilateral superior temporal gyrus (STg). These findings thus suggest that, similar to alphabetic languages, both phonemes and syllables are phonological production units associated with distinctive neural representations in Mandarin Chinese and further implicate the universality of hierarchical phonological coding across different linguistic systems.

Seriality of semantic and phonological processes during overt speech in Mandarin as revealed by event-related brain potentials

How is information transmitted across semantic and phonological levels in spoken word production? Recent evidence from speakers of Western languages such as English and Dutch suggests non-discrete transmission, but it is not clear whether this view can be generalized to other languages such as Mandarin, given potential differences in phonological encoding across languages. The present study used Mandarin speakers and combined a behavioral picture-word interference task with event-related potentials. The design factorially crossed semantic and phonological relatedness. Results showed semantic and phonological effects both in behavioral and electrophysiological measurements, with statistical additivity in latencies, and discrete time signatures (250-450 ms and 450-600 ms after picture onset for the semantic and phonological condition, respectively). Overall, results suggest that in Mandarin spoken production, information is transmitted from semantic to phonological levels in a sequential fashion. Hence, temporal signatures associated with spoken word production might differ depending on target language.

Decoding of Chinese phoneme clusters using ECoG

A finite set of phonetic units is used in human speech, but how our brain recognizes these units from speech streams is still largely unknown. The revealing of this neural mechanism may lead to the development of new types of speech brain computer interfaces (BCI) and computer speech recognition systems. In this study, we used electrocorticography (ECoG) signal from human cortex to decode phonetic units during the perception of continuous speech. By exploring the wavelet time-frequency features, we identified ECoG electrodes that have selective response to specific Chinese phonemes. Gamma and high-gamma power of these electrodes were further combined to separate sets of phonemes into clusters. The clustered organization largely coincided with phonological categories defined by the place of articulation and manner of articulation. These findings were incorporated into a decoding framework of Chinese phonemes clusters. Using support vector machine (SVM) classifier, we achieved consistent accuracies higher than chance level across five patients discriminating specific phonetic clusters, which suggests a promising direction of implementing a speech BCI.

The effect of orthographic form-cuing on the phonological preparation unit in spoken word production

Two experiments using the form-preparation paradigm were conducted to investigate the effect of orthographic form-cuing on the phonological preparation unit during spoken word production with native Mandarin speakers. In both experiments, participants were instructed to memorize nine prompt-response monosyllabic word pairs, after which an associative naming session was conducted in which the prompts were presented and participants were asked to say the corresponding response names as quickly and accurately as possible. In both experiments, the response words in the homogeneous lists shared the same onsets, or shared the same rimes; the response names had no common aspects of pronunciation in the heterogeneous lists. Chinese characters (Experiment 1) and Pinyin (phonetic transcription of the characters) (Experiment 2) were used to investigate the effect of the orthographic form. Significant onset facilitation and rime inhibition was shown for Pinyin syllables but not for characters. The contrasts of the onset and rime effect in the two orthographic forms suggest that a specific phonological unit is promoted in spoken word production in a certain orthographic form. Pinyin cued the participants to prepare the onset whereas Chinese characters did not. The rime interference effect may arise as a result of lexical competition in spoken word production.

The role of phoneme in Mandarin Chinese production: evidence from ERPs

Established linguistic theoretical frameworks propose that alphabetic language speakers use phonemes as phonological encoding units during speech production whereas Mandarin Chinese speakers use syllables. This framework was challenged by recent neural evidence of facilitation induced by overlapping initial phonemes, raising the possibility that phonemes also contribute to the phonological encoding process in Chinese. However, there is no evidence of non-initial phoneme involvement in Chinese phonological encoding among representative Chinese speakers, rendering the functional role of phonemes in spoken Chinese controversial. Here, we addressed this issue by systematically investigating the word-initial and non-initial phoneme repetition effect on the electrophysiological signal using a picture-naming priming task in which native Chinese speakers produced disyllabic word pairs. We found that overlapping phonemes in both the initial and non-initial position evoked more positive ERPs in the 180- to 300-ms interval, indicating position-invariant repetition facilitation effect during phonological encoding. Our findings thus revealed the fundamental role of phonemes as independent phonological encoding units in Mandarin Chinese.

Neural correlates reveal sub-lexical orthography and phonology during reading aloud: a review

The sub-lexical conversion of graphemes-to-phonemes (GPC) during reading has been investigated extensively with behavioral measures, as well as event-related potentials (ERPs). Most research utilizes silent reading (e.g., lexical decision task) for which phonological activation is not a necessity. However, recent research employed reading aloud to capture sub-lexical GPC. The masked priming paradigm avoids strategic processing and is therefore well suitable for capturing sub-lexical processing instead of lexical effects. By employing ERPs, the on-line time course of sub-lexical GPC can be observed before the overt response. ERPs have revealed that besides phonological activation, as revealed by behavioral studies, there is also early orthographic activation. This review describes studies in one's native language, in one's second language, and in a cross-language situation. We discuss the implications the ERP results have on different (computational) models. First, the ERP results show that computational models should assume an early locus of the GPC. Second, cross-language studies reveal that the phonological representations from both languages of a bilingual become activated automatically and the phonology belonging to the context is selected rapidly. Therefore, it is important to extend the scope of computational models of reading (aloud) to multiple lexicons.

Processing morphologically complex words in second-language learners: the effect of proficiency

The present study explored how the processing of morphologically complex words in second-language (L2) learners changes as their proficiency increases. ERPs were recorded from highly proficient and less proficient L2 learners, using the repetition priming paradigm. Three experimental conditions were investigated: morphological related/unrelated pairs, semantically related/unrelated pairs, and form related/unrelated pairs. The presence of priming in each condition was assessed by comparing responses to targets preceded by related primes with those preceded by unrelated primes. ERP results showed that highly proficient L2 learners demonstrated priming effect within 350-550 ms in the morphological condition, associating with an N400 reduction, while less proficient L2 learners showed no morphological priming effect within the N400 range. Besides, form priming effect was observed in both highly proficient and less proficient L2 learners within 400-450 ms and 450-500 ms, and semantic inhibiting effect was observed in both groups within 450-500 ms, suggesting that less proficient L2 learners were equally sensitive to the word form and meaning. The ERP results indicate that highly proficient L2 learners manifest rule-based decomposition, while less proficient L2 learners rely more on lexical storage in processing morphologically complex words. Less proficient L2 learners have not developed the decomposing mechanism, despite their sensitivity to word form and meaning. The way in which morphologically complex words are processed in L2 learners does change as their proficiency increases, validating the predictions of the declarative/procedural model.

The use of conceptual components in language production: an ERP study

According to frame-theory, concepts can be represented as structured frames that contain conceptual attributes (e.g., "color") and their values (e.g., "red"). A particular color value can be seen as a core conceptual component for (high color-diagnostic; HCD) objects (e.g., bananas) which are strongly associated with a typical color, but less so for (low color-diagnostic; LCD) objects (e.g., bicycles) that exist in many different colors. To investigate whether the availability of a core conceptual component (color) affects lexical access in language production, we conducted two experiments on the naming of visually presented HCD and LCD objects. Experiment 1 showed that, when naming latencies were matched for colored HCD and LCD objects, achromatic HCD objects were named more slowly than achromatic LCD objects. In Experiment 2 we recorded ERPs while participants performed a picture-naming task, in which achromatic target pictures were either preceded by an appropriately colored box (primed condition) or a black and white checkerboard (unprimed condition). We focused on the P2 component, which has been shown to reflect difficulty of lexical access in language production. Results showed that HCD resulted in slower object-naming and a more pronounced P2. Priming also yielded a more positive P2 but did not result in an RT difference. ERP waveforms on the P1, P2 and N300 components showed a priming by color-diagnosticity interaction, the effect of color priming being stronger for HCD objects than for LCD objects. The effect of color-diagnosticity on the P2 component suggests that the slower naming of achromatic HCD objects is (at least in part) due to more difficult lexical retrieval. Hence, the color attribute seems to affect lexical retrieval in HCD words. The interaction between priming and color-diagnosticity indicates that priming with a feature hinders lexical access, especially if the feature is a core feature of the target object.

Phonemes and Production

This comment offers observations that support Hickok's claim that phoneme sized representations are involved more in speech production than speech perception, but notes that languages may vary with regard to the importance of the phoneme.

Is handwriting constrained by phonology? Evidence from Stroop tasks with written responses and Chinese characters

To what extent is handwritten word production based on phonological codes? A few studies conducted in Western languages have recently provided evidence showing that phonology contributes to the retrieval of graphemic properties in written output tasks. Less is known about how orthographic production works in languages with non-alphabetic scripts such as written Chinese. We report a Stroop study in which Chinese participants wrote the color of characters on a digital graphic tablet; characters were either neutral, or homophonic to the target (congruent), or homophonic to an alternative (incongruent). Facilitation was found from congruent homophonic distractors, but only when the homophone shared the same tone with the target. This finding suggests a contribution of phonology to written word production. A second experiment served as a control experiment to exclude the possibility that the effect in Experiment 1 had an exclusively semantic locus. Overall, the findings offer new insight into the relative contribution of phonology to handwriting, particularly in non-Western languages.

The proximate phonological unit of Chinese-English bilinguals: proficiency matters

An essential step to create phonology according to the language production model by Levelt, Roelofs and Meyer is to assemble phonemes into a metrical frame. However, recently, it has been proposed that different languages may rely on different grain sizes of phonological units to construct phonology. For instance, it has been proposed that, instead of phonemes, Mandarin Chinese uses syllables and Japanese uses moras to fill the metrical frame. In this study, we used a masked priming-naming task to investigate how bilinguals assemble their phonology for each language when the two languages differ in grain size. Highly proficient Mandarin Chinese-English bilinguals showed a significant masked onset priming effect in English (L2), and a significant masked syllabic priming effect in Mandarin Chinese (L1). These results suggest that their proximate unit is phonemic in L2 (English), and that bilinguals may use different phonological units depending on the language that is being processed. Additionally, under some conditions, a significant sub-syllabic priming effect was observed even in Mandarin Chinese, which indicates that L2 phonology exerts influences on L1 target processing as a consequence of having a good command of English.