The effect of experience with phonological sequences on the suppression effect, used to assess echoic sensory memory, within the auditory‐evoked potentials (AEPs)

Abstract

Specific Language Impairment (SLI), a developmental language disorder, has been associated with deficits in working memory (Gathercole, 2006). Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), Helenius and colleagues (2009, 2014) have shown that adults and children with SLI have impaired sensory memory for the repetition of meaningful spoken words. Also, of interest is whether individuals with SLI show impaired sensory memory for phonological sequences, which would likely affect vocabulary learning. As a first step in pursuing this question, we examined the effects of experience with phonological sequences on the suppression effect used to assess sensory memory. The suppression effect, is a reduced response within the auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) or its magnetic counterpart, to repetition of an auditory event, including phonological sequences. EEGs were recorded from 24 native‐English and 24 native‐Polish adults as they listened to same and different non‐word pairs within two experimental sessions. Non‐word pairs contained a phonological sequence contrast, /st‐sət/that occurs in the English and Polish languages and a contrast /pt‐pət/that occurs only in the Polish language. The EEG was time locked to the second word in the non‐word pairs, which was the same non‐word in the same pairs (pətilɑ‐pətilɑ) and different pairs (ptilɑ‐pətilɑ). Thus, a larger AEP response to the second word in the different pairs relative to the second word in the same pairs indicates that the brain registered the additional sound in the different pair. Likewise, evidence of the suppression effect within the same pairs suggest an intact sensory memory for the phonological sequences within the first non‐word. Preliminary examination of results at averaged fronto‐central electrode sites within the AEP revealed an effect of language experience between ~400–600 ms post‐word onset. The native‐Polish listeners showed a larger response to their native language /pt‐pət/contrast than the English listeners and the English listeners showed a larger response to the /st‐sət/contrast that is more prominent in the English language than the Polish language. Thus, native‐language experience and frequency of phonological sequences within a language should be considered when assessing sensory memory in clinical populations.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.