The event related potential profiling of consonants and vowels across rule learning task through auditory stimuli

Abstract

The present study was aimed to investigate the hypothesis of differential use of consonants and vowels in rule learning tasks by analysing patterned Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) in response to trisyllabic auditory non-sense word stimuli in an oddball paradigm. The study included standard stimuli of ABB rule, applicable to vowels in vowel conditions and consonants in consonant conditions, and two deviant stimulus types consisting of novel phonemes. The results showed that both phoneme and rule deviants exhibited significant changes in ERP profiling in amplitude and latency compared to standard stimuli in consonant conditions and only with rule deviant in vowel conditions. These findings suggest that vowels and consonants play a fundamental role in neurolinguistics, whereas, vowels are important for understanding the rules of language, while consonants commencing the process of lexicon access. Overall, the study provides important insights into the neural dynamics underlying the differential processing of consonants and vowels.