Abstract
Predictions of our sensory environment facilitate perception across domains. During speech perception, formal and temporal predictions may be made for phonotactic probability and syllable stress patterns, respectively, contributing to the efficient processing of speech input. The current experiment employed a passive EEG oddball paradigm to probe the neurophysiological processes underlying temporal and formal predictions simultaneously. The component of interest, the mismatch negativity (MMN), is considered a marker for experience-dependent change detection, where its timing and amplitude are indicative of the perceptual system’s sensitivity to presented stimuli. We hypothesized that more predictable stimuli (i.e. high phonotactic probability and first syllable stress) would facilitate change detection, indexed by shorter peak latencies or greater peak amplitudes of the MMN. This hypothesis was confirmed for phonotactic probability: high phonotactic probability deviants elicited an earlier MMN than low phonotactic probability deviants. We do not observe a significant modulation of the MMN to variations in syllable stress. Our findings confirm that speech perception is shaped by formal and temporal predictability. This paradigm may be useful to investigate the contribution of implicit processing of statistical regularities during (a)typical language development.
Highlights
The current study aims to test the following hypotheses: (1) deviants differing from standards in terms of phonotactic probability or syllable stress elicit an mismatch negativity (MMN), indicated by a greater negativity in response to deviants compared to standards; (2) this MMN to formal or temporal deviants is modulated by phonotactic probability or syllable stress, respectively, which may present as a larger MMN amplitude[36,37,38], or shorter MMN latency for more predictable deviants. (3) variations in predictability in the other domain may further modulate this MMN sensitivity
The aim of the current experiment was to develop and test an EEG paradigm to provide a measure for formal and temporal predictions in speech perception. This was achieved by means of a passive auditory oddball paradigm, with stimuli consisting of Dutch pseudowords varying in their phonotactic probability and syllable stress pattern
The component of interest, the mismatch negativity, is a marker of auditory change detection modulated by experience: It is sensitive to higher-level regularities in the speech signal which are acquired during development, including phonotactic probability[36] and syllable stress[40]
Summary
Children and adolescents show better performance in speed and accuracy for high compared to low phonotactic probability items in nonword repetition tasks[18,19,20] This effect is reversed for word learning[21,22]. Similar patterns are observed in adults, with a high-probability advantages shown for spoken nonword recognition[23,24], nonword repetition[25,26] and serial nonword recall[27], but a disadvantage for high probability items in word learning[28] This contrast between nonword repetition and word learning in both children and adults is hypothesized to be due to low probability sequences of speech sounds being more identified as novel words that need to be learned, effectively triggering the learning process more readily[21,22,28]. Variations of formal and temporal predictability simultaneously occur in natural speech, ERP studies have so far typically investigated these in isolation
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