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Lyu S, Põldver N, Kask L, Wang L, Kreegipuu K. Effect of musical expertise on the perception of duration and pitch in language: A cross-linguistic study. Acta Psychol (Amst) 2024; 244:104195. [PMID: 38412710 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104195] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/09/2023] [Revised: 02/20/2024] [Accepted: 02/21/2024] [Indexed: 02/29/2024] Open
Abstract
This study adopts a cross-linguistic perspective and investigates how musical expertise affects the perception of duration and pitch in language. Native speakers of Chinese (N = 44) and Estonian (N = 46), each group subdivided into musicians and non-musicians, participated in a mismatch negativity (MMN) experiment where they passively listened to both Chinese and Estonian stimuli, followed by a behavioral experiment where they attentively discriminated the stimuli in the non-native language (i.e., Chinese to Estonian participants and Estonian to Chinese participants). In both experiments, stimuli of duration change, pitch change, and duration plus pitch change were discriminated. We found higher behavioral sensitivity among Chinese musicians than non-musicians in perceiving the duration change in Estonian and higher behavioral sensitivity among Estonian musicians than non-musicians in perceiving all types of changes in Chinese, but no corresponding effect was found in the MMN results, which suggests a more salient effect of musical expertise on foreign language processing when attention is required. Secondly, Chinese musicians did not outperform non-musicians in attentively discriminating the pitch-related stimuli in Estonian, suggesting that musical expertise can be overridden by tonal language experience when perceiving foreign linguistic pitch, especially when an attentive discrimination task is administered. Thirdly, we found larger MMN among Chinese and Estonian musicians than their non-musician counterparts in perceiving the largest deviant (i.e., duration plus pitch) in their native language. Taken together, our results demonstrate a positive effect of musical expertise on language processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Siqi Lyu
- Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia
| | - Nele Põldver
- Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia
| | - Liis Kask
- Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia
| | - Luming Wang
- College of Foreign Languages, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China
| | - Kairi Kreegipuu
- Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia.
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Discriminatory Brain Processes of Native and Foreign Language in Children with and without Reading Difficulties. Brain Sci 2022; 13:brainsci13010076. [PMID: 36672057 PMCID: PMC9856413 DOI: 10.3390/brainsci13010076] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/11/2022] [Revised: 12/21/2022] [Accepted: 12/28/2022] [Indexed: 01/03/2023] Open
Abstract
The association between impaired speech perception and reading difficulty has been well established in native language processing, as can be observed from brain activity. However, there has been scarce investigation of whether this association extends to brain activity during foreign language processing. The relationship between reading skills and neuronal speech representation of foreign language remains unclear. In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) with high-density EEG to investigate this question. Eleven- to 13-year-old children typically developed (CTR) or with reading difficulties (RD) were tested via a passive auditory oddball paradigm containing native (Finnish) and foreign (English) speech items. The change-detection-related ERP responses, the mismatch response (MMR), and the late discriminative negativity (LDN) were studied. The cluster-based permutation tests within and between groups were performed. The results showed an apparent language effect. In the CTR group, we found an atypical MMR in the foreign language processing and a larger LDN response for speech items containing a diphthong in both languages. In the RD group, we found unstable MMR with lower amplitude and a nonsignificant LDN response. A deficit in the LDN response in both languages was found within the RD group analysis. Moreover, we observed larger brain responses in the RD group and a hemispheric polarity reversal compared to the CTR group responses. Our results provide new evidence that language processing differed between the CTR and RD groups in early and late discriminatory responses and that language processing is linked to reading skills in both native and foreign language contexts.
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Eberhard-Moscicka AK, Jost LB, Daum MM, Maurer U. Predicting Reading From Behavioral and Neural Measures - A Longitudinal Event-Related Potential Study. Front Psychol 2021; 12:733494. [PMID: 34916991 PMCID: PMC8669350 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.733494] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2021] [Accepted: 10/20/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Fluent reading is characterized by fast and effortless decoding of visual and phonological information. Here we used event-related potentials (ERPs) and neuropsychological testing to probe the neurocognitive basis of reading in a sample of children with a wide range of reading skills. We report data of 51 children who were measured at two time points, i.e., at the end of first grade (mean age 7.6 years) and at the end of fourth grade (mean age 10.5 years). The aim of this study was to clarify whether next to behavioral measures also basic unimodal and bimodal neural measures help explaining the variance in the later reading outcome. Specifically, we addressed the question of whether next to the so far investigated unimodal measures of N1 print tuning and mismatch negativity (MMN), a bimodal measure of audiovisual integration (AV) contributes and possibly enhances prediction of the later reading outcome. We found that the largest variance in reading was explained by the behavioral measures of rapid automatized naming (RAN), block design and vocabulary (46%). Furthermore, we demonstrated that both unimodal measures of N1 print tuning (16%) and filtered MMN (7%) predicted reading, suggesting that N1 print tuning at the early stage of reading acquisition is a particularly good predictor of the later reading outcome. Beyond the behavioral measures, the two unimodal neural measures explained 7.2% additional variance in reading, indicating that basic neural measures can improve prediction of the later reading outcome over behavioral measures alone. In this study, the AV congruency effect did not significantly predict reading. It is therefore possible that audiovisual congruency effects reflect higher levels of multisensory integration that may be less important for reading acquisition in the first year of learning to read, and that they may potentially gain on relevance later on.
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Affiliation(s)
- Aleksandra K. Eberhard-Moscicka
- Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Perception and Eye Movement Laboratory, Department of Neurology and BioMedical Research, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital and University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
- Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Lea B. Jost
- Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Department of Neuroscience and Movement Science, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
| | - Moritz M. Daum
- Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Urs Maurer
- Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China
- Brain and Mind Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China
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Yu YH, Shafer VL, Sussman ES. The Duration of Auditory Sensory Memory for Vowel Processing: Neurophysiological and Behavioral Measures. Front Psychol 2018; 9:335. [PMID: 29623054 PMCID: PMC5874311 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00335] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/19/2017] [Accepted: 02/27/2018] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Speech perception behavioral research suggests that rates of sensory memory decay are dependent on stimulus properties at more than one level (e.g., acoustic level, phonemic level). The neurophysiology of sensory memory decay rate has rarely been examined in the context of speech processing. In a lexical tone study, we showed that long-term memory representation of lexical tone slows the decay rate of sensory memory for these tones. Here, we tested the hypothesis that long-term memory representation of vowels slows the rate of auditory sensory memory decay in a similar way to that of lexical tone. Event-related potential (ERP) responses were recorded to Mandarin non-words contrasting the vowels /i/ vs. /u/ and /y/ vs. /u/ from first-language (L1) Mandarin and L1 American English participants under short and long interstimulus interval (ISI) conditions (short ISI: an average of 575 ms, long ISI: an average of 2675 ms). Results revealed poorer discrimination of the vowel contrasts for English listeners than Mandarin listeners, but with different patterns for behavioral perception and neural discrimination. As predicted, English listeners showed the poorest discrimination and identification for the vowel contrast /y/ vs. /u/, and poorer performance in the long ISI condition. In contrast to Yu et al. (2017), however, we found no effect of ISI reflected in the neural responses, specifically the mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a and late negativity ERP amplitudes. We did see a language group effect, with Mandarin listeners generally showing larger MMN and English listeners showing larger P3a. The behavioral results revealed that native language experience plays a role in echoic sensory memory trace maintenance, but the failure to find an effect of ISI on the ERP results suggests that vowel and lexical tone memory traces decay at different rates. Highlights: We examined the interaction between auditory sensory memory decay and language experience. We compared MMN, P3a, LN and behavioral responses in short vs. long interstimulus intervals. We found that different from lexical tone contrast, MMN, P3a, and LN changes to vowel contrasts are not influenced by lengthening the ISI to 2.6 s. We also found that the English listeners discriminated the non-native vowel contrast with lower accuracy under the long ISI condition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yan H Yu
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, St. John's University, Queens, NY, United States
| | - Valerie L Shafer
- Ph.D. Program in Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, New York, NY, United States
| | - Elyse S Sussman
- Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, NY, United States
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Yu YH, Shafer VL, Sussman ES. Neurophysiological and Behavioral Responses of Mandarin Lexical Tone Processing. Front Neurosci 2017; 11:95. [PMID: 28321179 PMCID: PMC5338334 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2017.00095] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/21/2016] [Accepted: 02/13/2017] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Language experience enhances discrimination of speech contrasts at a behavioral- perceptual level, as well as at a pre-attentive level, as indexed by event-related potential (ERP) mismatch negativity (MMN) responses. The enhanced sensitivity could be the result of changes in acoustic resolution and/or long-term memory representations of the relevant information in the auditory cortex. To examine these possibilities, we used a short (ca. 600 ms) vs. long (ca. 2,600 ms) interstimulus interval (ISI) in a passive, oddball discrimination task while obtaining ERPs. These ISI differences were used to test whether cross-linguistic differences in processing Mandarin lexical tone are a function of differences in acoustic resolution and/or differences in long-term memory representations. Bisyllabic nonword tokens that differed in lexical tone categories were presented using a passive listening multiple oddball paradigm. Behavioral discrimination and identification data were also collected. The ERP results revealed robust MMNs to both easy and difficult lexical tone differences for both groups at short ISIs. At long ISIs, there was either no change or an enhanced MMN amplitude for the Mandarin group, but reduced MMN amplitude for the English group. In addition, the Mandarin listeners showed a larger late negativity (LN) discriminative response than the English listeners for lexical tone contrasts in the long ISI condition. Mandarin speakers outperformed English speakers in the behavioral tasks, especially under the long ISI conditions with the more similar lexical tone pair. These results suggest that the acoustic correlates of lexical tone are fairly robust and easily discriminated at short ISIs, when the auditory sensory memory trace is strong. At longer ISIs beyond 2.5 s language-specific experience is necessary for robust discrimination.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yan H. Yu
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, St. John's UniversityQueens, NY, USA
| | - Valerie L. Shafer
- Ph.D. Program of Speech-Language-Hearing Science, The Graduate Center, City University of New YorkNew York, NY, USA
| | - Elyse S. Sussman
- Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience, Rose F. Kennedy Center, Albert Einstein College of MedicineNew York, NY, USA
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Bien H, Hanulíková A, Weber A, Zwitserlood P. A Neurophysiological Investigation of Non-native Phoneme Perception by Dutch and German Listeners. Front Psychol 2016; 7:56. [PMID: 26858685 PMCID: PMC4731499 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00056] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/13/2015] [Accepted: 01/11/2016] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The Mismatch Negativity (MMN) response has often been used to measure memory traces for phonological representations and to show effects of long-term native language (L1) experience on neural organization. We know little about whether phonological representations of non-native (L2) phonemes are modulated by experience with distinct non-native accents. We used MMN to examine effects of experience with L2-accented speech on auditory brain responses. Specifically, we tested whether it is long-term experience with language-specific L2 pronunciations or instead acoustic similarity between L2 speech sounds that modulates non-native phoneme perception. We registered MMN responses of Dutch and German proficient L2 speakers of English to the English interdental fricative /𝜃/ and compared it to its non-native pronunciations /s/ (typical pronunciation of /𝜃/ for German speakers) and /t/ (typical pronunciation of /𝜃/ for Dutch speakers). Dutch and German listeners heard the English pseudoword thond and its pronunciation deviants sond and tond. We computed the identity Mismatch Negativity (iMMN) by analyzing the difference in ERPs when the deviants were the frequent vs. the infrequent stimulus for the respective group of L2 listeners. For both groups, tond and sond elicited mismatch effects of comparable size. Overall, the results suggest that experience with deviant pronunciations of L2 speech sounds in foreign-accented speech does not alter auditory memory traces. Instead, non-native phoneme perception seems to be modulated by acoustic similarity between speech sounds rather than by experience with typical L2 pronunciation patterns.
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Affiliation(s)
- Heidrun Bien
- Centre for Psychiatry, Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, Queen Mary University of LondonLondon, UK
- Institute for Psychology, University of MünsterMünster, Germany
- *Correspondence: Heidrun Bien,
| | | | - Andrea Weber
- Eberhard-Karls-Universität TübingenTübingen, Germany
- *Correspondence: Heidrun Bien,
| | - Pienie Zwitserlood
- Institute for Psychology, University of MünsterMünster, Germany
- Otto Creutzfeldt Center for Cognitive and Behavioral NeuroscienceMünster, Germany
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Native and non-native speech sound processing and the neural mismatch responses: A longitudinal study on classroom-based foreign language learning. Neuropsychologia 2015; 72:94-104. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.04.029] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/29/2014] [Revised: 04/17/2015] [Accepted: 04/26/2015] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
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Myers EB. Emergence of category-level sensitivities in non-native speech sound learning. Front Neurosci 2014; 8:238. [PMID: 25152708 PMCID: PMC4125857 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2014.00238] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/24/2014] [Accepted: 07/20/2014] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Over the course of development, speech sounds that are contrastive in one's native language tend to become perceived categorically: that is, listeners are unaware of variation within phonetic categories while showing excellent sensitivity to speech sounds that span linguistically meaningful phonetic category boundaries. The end stage of this developmental process is that the perceptual systems that handle acoustic-phonetic information show special tuning to native language contrasts, and as such, category-level information appears to be present at even fairly low levels of the neural processing stream. Research on adults acquiring non-native speech categories offers an avenue for investigating the interplay of category-level information and perceptual sensitivities to these sounds as speech categories emerge. In particular, one can observe the neural changes that unfold as listeners learn not only to perceive acoustic distinctions that mark non-native speech sound contrasts, but also to map these distinctions onto category-level representations. An emergent literature on the neural basis of novel and non-native speech sound learning offers new insight into this question. In this review, I will examine this literature in order to answer two key questions. First, where in the neural pathway does sensitivity to category-level phonetic information first emerge over the trajectory of speech sound learning? Second, how do frontal and temporal brain areas work in concert over the course of non-native speech sound learning? Finally, in the context of this literature I will describe a model of speech sound learning in which rapidly-adapting access to categorical information in the frontal lobes modulates the sensitivity of stable, slowly-adapting responses in the temporal lobes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Emily B Myers
- Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, University of Connecticut Storrs, CT, USA ; Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut Storrs, CT, USA ; Haskins Laboratories New Haven, CT, USA
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Shafer VL, Yu YH, Datta H. The Development of English Vowel Perception in Monolingual and Bilingual Infants: Neurophysiological Correlates. JOURNAL OF PHONETICS 2011; 39:527-545. [PMID: 22046059 PMCID: PMC3201800 DOI: 10.1016/j.wocn.2010.11.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 37] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/06/2023]
Abstract
The goal of this paper was to examine intrinsic and extrinsic factors contributing to the development of speech perception in monolingual and bilingual infants and toddlers. A substantial number of behavioral studies have characterized when infants show changes in behavior towards speech sounds in relation to amount of experience with these sounds. However, these studies cannot explain to what extent the developmental timeline is influenced by experience with the language versus constraints imposed by cortical maturation. Studies using electrophysiological measures to examine the development of auditory and speech processing have shown great differences in infant and adult electrophysiological correlates of processing. Many of these differences are a function of immature cortex in the infant. In this paper, we examined the maturation of infant and child event-related-potential (ERP) electrophysiological components in processing an English vowel contrast and explored to what extent these components are influenced by intrinsic (e.g., sex) versus extrinsic factors, such as language experience (monolingual vs. bilingual). Our findings demonstrate differences in the pattern of ERP responses related to age and sex, as well as language experience. These differences make it clear that general maturational factors need to be taken into consideration in examining the effect of language experience on the neurodevelopment of speech perception.
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