Late negative response revealed language-specific processing of word-level prosodic phonology in the adult brain

Abstract

Native speakers develop specialized neural architectures in the processing of auditory patterns found in their language. However, little is known about the neural basis of language-specific processing of phonological patterns beyond the syllable level. The current event-related potential (ERP) study investigated cortical processing of native vs. nonnative prosodic phonology in a disyllabic context. The participants were 18 normal native Chinese-speaking adults who had at least six years of English-as-a-second-language course work in school. The speech stimuli included disyllabic nonsense words spoken in Chinese and in English, which were matched in syllabic structure and digitally edited for matching in overall duration and intensity. The control nonspeech stimuli were hummed versions of the speech stimuli, which preserved the acoustic prosodic features but not the phonetic content. The ERP data were obtained with a passive listening paradigm, showing an enhanced late negative response (LNR) for the native vs. nonnative comparison in the speech condition but not in the nonspeech condition. These results provided the initial evidence that the LNR component can reflect language-specific differences in prosodic phonology beyond auditory processing of the critical acoustic cues at the supra-syllabic level.Native speakers develop specialized neural architectures in the processing of auditory patterns found in their language. However, little is known about the neural basis of language-specific processing of phonological patterns beyond the syllable level. The current event-related potential (ERP) study investigated cortical processing of native vs. nonnative prosodic phonology in a disyllabic context. The participants were 18 normal native Chinese-speaking adults who had at least six years of English-as-a-second-language course work in school. The speech stimuli included disyllabic nonsense words spoken in Chinese and in English, which were matched in syllabic structure and digitally edited for matching in overall duration and intensity. The control nonspeech stimuli were hummed versions of the speech stimuli, which preserved the acoustic prosodic features but not the phonetic content. The ERP data were obtained with a passive listening paradigm, showing an enhanced late negative response (LNR) for the nativ...