Phonological Mapping Negativity Research Articles

Cognitive neural responses in the semantic comprehension of sound symbolic words and pseudowords.

Sound symbolism is the phenomenon of sounds having non-arbitrary meaning, and it has been demonstrated that pseudowords with sound symbolic elements have similar meaning to lexical words. It is unclear how the impression given by the sound symbolic elements is semantically processed, in contrast to lexical words with definite meanings. In event-related potential (ERP) studies, phonological mapping negativity (PMN) and N400 are often used as measures of phonological and semantic processing, respectively. Therefore, in this study, we analyze PMN and N400 to clarify the differences between existing sound symbolic words (onomatopoeia or ideophones) and pseudowords in terms of semantic and phonological processing. An existing sound symbolic word and pseudowords were presented as an auditory stimulus in combination with a picture of an event, and PMN and N400 were measured while the subjects determined whether the sound stimuli and pictures match or mismatch. In both the existing word and pseudoword tasks, the amplitude of PMN and N400 increased when the picture of an event and the speech sound did not match. Additionally, compared to the existing words, the pseudowords elicited a greater amplitude for PMN and N400. In addition, PMN latency was delayed in the mismatch condition relative to the match condition for both existing sound symbolic words and pseudowords. We concluded that established sound symbolic words and sound symbolic pseudowords undergo similar semantic processing. This finding suggests that sound symbolism pseudowords are not judged on a simple impression level (e.g., spiky/round) or activated by other words with similar spellings (phonological structures) in the lexicon, but are judged on a similar contextual basis as actual words.

The MMN by another name? Exploring the autonomy of the Phonological Mapping (Mismatch) Negativity

ABSTRACT The Phonological Mapping Negativity (PMN) is an event-related potential component thought to index pre-lexical phonological processing. The response has long been considered distinct from the temporally-proximate Mismatch Negativity (MMN) – a distinction that primarily rests on the assumption that the PMN, unlike the MMN, cannot be elicited in inattentive contexts, thus implying differing underlying auditory-cortex mechanisms. Despite this, no study to date has established whether elicitation of an inattentive PMN response is possible. Here, we tested this assumption in two experiments during which participants heard phonological mismatches whilst engaging in a distractor task (experiment 1) or watching a film (experiment 2). Our results showed no consistent evidence for an inattentive PMN. Though attention may indeed serve to distinguish the two components, our results highlight consistent discrepancies in the temporal, topographical, and functional characteristics of the PMN that undermine efforts to establish its significance in the electrophysiological timeline of speech processing.

Event-Related Potentials Elicited by Phonetic Errors Differentiate Children With Speech Sound Disorder and Typically Developing Peers.

A growing body of research suggests that a deficit in speech perception abilities contributes to the development of speech sound disorder (SSD). However, little work has been done to characterize the neurophysiological processes indexing speech perception deficits in this population. The primary aim of this study was to compare the neural activity underlying speech perception in young children with SSD and with typical development (TD). Twenty-eight children ages 4;1-6;0 (years;months) participated in this study. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while children completed a speech perception task that included phonetic (speech sound) and lexical (meaning) matches and mismatches. Groups were compared on their judgment accuracy for matches and mismatches as well as the mean amplitude of the phonological mapping negativity (PMN) and N400 ERP components. Children with SSD demonstrated lower judgment accuracy across the phonetic and lexical conditions compared to peers with TD. The ERPs elicited by lexical matches and mismatches did not distinguish the groups. However, in the phonetic condition, the SSD group exhibited a more consistent left-lateralized PMN effect and a delayed N400 effect over frontal sites compared to the TD group. These findings provide some of the first evidence of a delay in the neurophysiological processing of phonological information for young children with SSD compared to their peers with TD. This delay was not present for the processing of lexical information, indicating a unique difference between children with SSD and with TD related to speech perception of phonetic errors. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16915579.

Novel Adjective Processing in Preschool Children: Evidence From Event-Related Brain Potentials.

Purpose Recent findings in preschool children indicated novel adjective recall was enhanced when learned using repeated retrieval with contextual reinstatement (RRCR) compared to repeated study (RS). Recall was similar for learned pictures used during training and new (generalized) pictures with the same adjective features. The current study compared the effects of learning method and learned/generalized pictures on the neural processes mediating the recognition of novel adjectives. Method Twenty typically developing children aged 4;6-5;11 (years;months) learned four novel adjectives, two using RRCR and two using RS. Five-minute and 1-week tests assessed adjective recall using learned and generalized pictures. Also, at the 1-week visit, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to assess children's processing of learned/generalized pictures, followed by naturally spoken novel adjectives in a match-mismatch paradigm. Results Naming recall and match-mismatch judgment accuracy were similar for the RS and RRCR conditions and across learned/generalized pictures. However, ERPs revealed more reliable condition effects in the phonological mapping negativity, indexing phonological expectations, and the late positive component, indexing semantic reanalysis, for the adjectives learned in the RRCR relative to the RS condition. Unfamiliar pictures (generalized) elicited larger amplitude N300 and N400 components relative to learned pictures. Conclusions Although behavioral accuracy measures suggest similar effects of the RS and RRCR learning conditions, subtle differences in the ERPs underlying novel adjective processing indicate advantages of RRCR for phonological processing and semantic reanalysis. While children readily generalized the novel adjectives, ERPs revealed greater cognitive resources for processing unfamiliar compared to learned pictures of the novel adjective characteristics. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13683214.

The temporal dynamics of first and second language processing: ERPs to spoken words in Mandarin-English bilinguals

The dynamics of bilingual spoken word recognition remain poorly characterized, especially for individuals who speak two languages that are highly dissimilar in their phonological and morphological structure. The present study compared first language (L1) and second language (L2) spoken word processing within a group of adult Mandarin-English bilinguals (N = 34; ages 18–25). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants completed the same cross-modal matching task separately in their L1 Mandarin and L2 English. This task consisted of deciding whether spoken words matched pictures of items. Pictures and spoken words either matched (e.g., Mandarin: TANG2-tang2; English: BELL-bell), or differed in word-initial phonemes (e.g., Mandarin: TANG2-lang2; English: BELL-shell), word-final phonemes (e.g., Mandarin: TANG2-tao2; English: BELL-bed), or whole words (e.g., Mandarin: TANG2-xia1: English: BELL-ham). Each mismatch type was associated with a pattern of modulation of the Phonological Mapping Negativity, the N400, and the Late N400 that was distinct from those of the other mismatch types yet similar between the two languages. This was interpreted as evidence of incremental processing with similar temporal dynamics in both languages. These findings support models of spoken word recognition in bilingual individuals that adopt an interactive-activation framework for both L1 and L2 processing.

Better Phonological Short-Term Memory Is Linked to Improved Cortical Memory Representations for Word Forms and Better Word Learning.

Language learning relies on both short-term and long-term memory. Phonological short-term memory (pSTM) is thought to play an important role in the learning of novel word forms. However, language learners may differ in their ability to maintain word representations in pSTM during interfering auditory input. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate how pSTM capacity in better and poorer pSTM groups is linked to language learning and the maintenance of pseudowords in pSTM. In particular, MEG was recorded while participants maintained pseudowords in pSTM by covert speech rehearsal, and while these brain representations were probed by presenting auditory pseudowords with first or third syllables matching or mismatching the rehearsed item. A control condition included identical stimuli but no rehearsal. Differences in response strength between matching and mismatching syllables were interpreted as the phonological mapping negativity (PMN). While PMN for the first syllable was found in both groups, it was observed for the third syllable only in the group with better pSTM. This suggests that individuals with better pSTM maintained representations of trisyllabic pseudowords more accurately during interference than individuals with poorer pSTM. Importantly, the group with better pSTM learned words faster in a paired-associate word learning task, linking the PMN findings to language learning.

Phonological P2 or PMN During Spoken Word Recognition in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract. Word-initial phonological mismatches during spoken word recognition often elicit an event-related potential (ERP) component, namely, the phonological mapping negativity (PMN) in cross-modal priming studies or studies using sentence as context. However, recent studies also reported that a phonological P2 but not PMN has been observed for Mandarin Chinese spoken word recognition in unimodal word-matching and meaning-matching experiments, that is, both the prime and target words were presented auditorily. In the present study, the same pairs of disyllabic Mandarin Chinese words as in the prior unimodal studies were used as stimuli to investigate whether or not the phonological P2 effect is modulated by prime modality and can be replicated in a cross-modal design (i.e., written primes followed by spoken targets). Both the phonological and semantic relations between primes and targets were manipulated. Participants were instructed to judge whether the meaning of the two words were same or not. An enhanced PMN between 250 and 320 ms was elicited by word-initial phonological mismatches. In the later time window, centro-parietally distributed early N400 and late N400 were elicited in semantically unrelated conditions. The presence of PMN instead of P2 in the current study implies that ERP markers of word-initial phonological mismatches during spoken word recognition are modulated by the modality of primes at the level of phonological analysis.

How struggling adult readers use contextual information when comprehending speech: Evidence from event-related potentials

We investigated how struggling adult readers make use of sentence context to facilitate word processing when comprehending spoken language, conditions under which print decoding is not a barrier to comprehension. Stimuli were strongly and weakly constraining sentences (as measured by cloze probability), which ended with the most expected word based on those constraints or an unexpected but plausible word. Community-dwelling adults with varying literacy skills listened to continuous speech while their EEG was recorded. Participants, regardless of literacy level, showed N400 effects yoked to the cloze probability of the targets, with larger N400 amplitudes for less expected than more expected words. However, literacy-related differences emerged in an earlier time window of 170–300 ms: higher literacy adults produced a reduced negativity for strongly predictable targets over anterior channels, similar to previously reported effects on the Phonological Mapping Negativity (PMN), whereas low-literacy adults did not. Collectively, these findings suggest that in auditory sentence processing literacy may not notably affect the incremental activation of semantic features, but that comprehenders with underdeveloped literacy skills may be less likely to engage predictive processing. Thus, basic mechanisms of comprehension may be recruited differently as a function of literacy development—even in spoken language.

Online adjustment of phonetic expectation of lexical tones to accommodate speaker variation: a combined behavioural and ERP study

ABSTRACTAn unresolved question in speech perception is how speech signals with speaker variation are mapped onto their perceptual representations. In this study, this issue was examined using a written-word/spoken-word matching paradigm, where listeners could adjust phonetic expectations of spoken words carrying lexical tones according to speaker-specific F0 cues contained in a preceding speech context, to analyse the tone of the incoming spoken word. Behavioural results showed that Cantonese listeners perceived spoken words differently, in a way compatible with the adjustment of F0 expectations of lexical tones to accommodate between- and within-speaker variation in F0. Electrophysiologically, effects of F0 expectation adjustment were found in the phonological mapping negativity (PMN) time-window (250–310 ms after spoken word onset). These results suggest that phonetic representations of lexical tones are adjustable in a speaker- and context-specific manner, with the adjustment occurring no later than pre-lexical phonemic processing. These findings are consistent with exemplar theory.

Phonological and semantic processing during comprehension in Wernicke's aphasia: An N400 and Phonological Mapping Negativity Study

Comprehension impairments in Wernicke's aphasia are thought to result from a combination of impaired phonological and semantic processes. However, the relationship between these cognitive processes and language comprehension has only been inferred through offline neuropsychological tasks. This study used ERPs to investigate phonological and semantic processing during online single word comprehension.EEG was recorded in a group of Wernicke's aphasia n=8 and control participants n=10 while performing a word-picture verification task. The N400 and Phonological Mapping Negativity/Phonological Mismatch Negativity (PMN) event-related potential components were investigated as an index of semantic and phonological processing, respectively. Individuals with Wernicke's aphasia displayed reduced and inconsistent N400 and PMN effects in comparison to control participants. Reduced N400 effects in the WA group were simulated in the control group by artificially degrading speech perception. Correlation analyses in the Wernicke's aphasia group found that PMN but not N400 amplitude was associated with behavioural word-picture verification performance.The results confirm impairments at both phonological and semantic stages of comprehension in Wernicke's aphasia. However, reduced N400 responses in Wernicke's aphasia are at least partially attributable to earlier phonological processing impairments. The results provide further support for the traditional model of Wernicke's aphasia which claims a causative link between phonological processing and language comprehension impairments.

Got experience? PMN amplitudes to foreign-accented speech modulated by listener experience

Abstract This study examines processing of native- and Chinese-accented English words. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for a set of spoken English words varying in degree of foreign accentedness. Waveform differences emerge for the Phonological Mapping Negativity (PMN) component across the continuum of foreign accentedness. Moreover, these differences in the response also vary across a measure of listener experience related to the amount of reported interaction listeners have with Chinese-accented speakers. The results are discussed in relation to online processing of speech variability, long-term exposure to the variability inherent to foreign-accented speech, and the functional significance of the PMN.

Lexical processing deficits in children with developmental language disorder: An event-related potentials study.

Lexical processing deficits in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have been postulated to arise as sequelae of their grammatical deficits (either directly or via compensatory mechanisms) and vice versa. We examined event-related potential indices of lexical processing in children with DLD (n = 23) and their typically developing peers (n = 16) using a picture-word matching paradigm. We found that children with DLD showed markedly reduced N400 amplitudes in response both to auditorily presented words that had initial phonological overlap with the name of the pictured object and to words that were not semantically or phonologically related to the pictured object. Moreover, this reduction was related to behavioral indices of phonological and lexical but not grammatical development. We also found that children with DLD showed a depressed phonological mapping negativity component in the early time window, suggesting deficits in phonological processing or early lexical access. The results are partially consistent with the overactivation account of lexical processing deficits in DLD and point to the relative functional independence of lexical/phonological and grammatical deficits in DLD, supporting a multidimensional view of the disorder. The results also, although indirectly, support the neuroplasticity account of DLD, according to which language impairment affects brain development and shapes the specific patterns of brain responses to language stimuli.

ERPs reveal the temporal dynamics of auditory word recognition in specific language impairment

We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to compare auditory word recognition in children with specific language impairment (SLI group; N = 14) to a group of typically developing children (TD group; N = 14). Subjects were presented with pictures of items and heard auditory words that either matched or mismatched the pictures. Mismatches overlapped expected words in word-onset (cohort mismatches; see: DOLL, hear: dog), rhyme (CONE – bone), or were unrelated (SHELL – mug). In match trials, the SLI group showed a different pattern of N100 responses to auditory stimuli compared to the TD group, indicative of early auditory processing differences in SLI. However, the phonological mapping negativity (PMN) response to mismatching items was comparable across groups, suggesting that just like TD children, children with SLI are capable of establishing phonological expectations and detecting violations of these expectations in an online fashion. Perhaps most importantly, we observed a lack of attenuation of the N400 for rhyming words in the SLI group, which suggests that either these children were not as sensitive to rhyme similarity as their typically developing peers, or did not suppress lexical alternatives to the same extent. These findings help shed light on the underlying deficits responsible for SLI.

An ERP investigation of regional and foreign accent processing

This study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine whether we employ the same normalisation mechanisms when processing words spoken with a regional accent or foreign accent. Our results showed that the Phonological Mapping Negativity (PMN) following the onset of the final word of sentences spoken with an unfamiliar regional accent was greater than for those produced in the listener’s own accent, whilst PMN for foreign accented speech was reduced. Foreign accents also resulted in a reduction in N400 amplitude when compared to both unfamiliar regional accents and the listener’s own accent, with no significant difference found between the N400 of the regional and home accents. These results suggest that regional accent related variations are normalised at the earliest stages of spoken word recognition, requiring less top-down lexical intervention than foreign accents.

Electrophysiological and behavioral measures of phonological processing of auditory nonsense V–CV–VCV stimuli

An event-related potential, the Phonological Mapping Negativity (PMN), has been reported to reflect recognition of phonological mismatches in speech stimuli. The purpose of the present study was to explore how the PMN response to the auditory nonsense syllable reflects phonological processing in isolation without the letter prime or lexical/semantic context. Sixty-four nonsense syllable stimuli were composed for each of three stimulus conditions: phonological match (PM), phonological mismatch with similar sound (PMMS), and phonological mismatch with different sound (PMMD), making a total of 192 stimuli. The PMN was measured from fourteen normal-hearing listeners. Electroencephalogram (EEG) activity was recorded while subjects were listening to the stimuli and responding behaviorally. Subjects were asked to determine what vowel–consonant–vowel (VCV) (e.g. /apa/) would be formed from the combination of the preceding vowel (V) (e.g. /a/) and consonant–vowel (CV) (e.g. /pa/), and press a ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ response button as soon as they decided whether the target VCV stimulus matched their expectation. In this way, along with the PMN, behavioral response accuracy and reaction times were obtained. The results were as follows: (1) PMN amplitude was not different by stimulus condition, (2) PMN amplitude was larger over frontal and central than posterior regions, but not different between the left versus right hemisphere, (3) PMN was detected in the absence of N400, and (4) behavioral responses were more accurate and faster in PMMD than PM and PMMS. Results indicate that the PMN can reflect phonological processing of auditory nonsense syllables in isolation. The scalp distribution of PMN is most dominant in the fronto-central regions without lateralization. Lastly, behavioral response accuracy and reaction times appear to be influenced by the extent of the task difficulty or processing demand rather than by the extent of phonological violation.

Atypical neural responses to phonological detail in children with developmental language impairments

Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is a developmental disorder affecting language learning across a number of domains. These difficulties are thought to be related to difficulties processing auditory speech, given findings of imperfect auditory processing across nonspeech tones, individual speech sounds and syllables. However the relationship of auditory difficulties to language development remains unclear. Perceiving connected speech involves resolving coarticulation, the imperceptible blending of speech movements across adjacent sounds, which gives rise to subtle variations in speech sounds. The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine neural responses to coarticulation in school age children with and without SLI. Atypical neural responses were observed for the SLI group in ERP indices of prelexical-phonological but not lexical stages of processing. Specifically, incongruent coarticulatory information resulted in a modulation of the N100 in the SLI but not typically developing group while a Phonological Mapping Negativity was elicited in the typically developing but not SLI group, unless additional cues were present. Neural responses to unexpected lexical mismatches indexed by the N400 ERP component were the same for both groups. The results demonstrate a relative insensitivity to important subphonemic features in SLI.

Attenuation of the phonological mapping negativity (PMN) by stimulus repetition

Event Abstract Back to Event Attenuation of the phonological mapping negativity (PMN) by stimulus repetition John Connolly1, 2*, E. Service1, 2, 3, C. Lefebvre2, D. Habib4 and P. Jolicoeur2 1 McMaster University, Canada 2 Université de Montréal, Canada 3 University of Helsinki, Finland 4 Queen’s University, Canada The PMN component is a relative increase in an event-related negative deflection 250 to 350 ms after stimulus onset. It is thought to reflect mapping of acoustic speech signals onto phonological representations. It is small, sometimes undetectable, when the beginnings of auditory words match strong phonological expectations. It is large when strong expectations of the first phoneme of a word are not met. The PMN differs from the MMN response in that it is not limited to oddball paradigms. It differs from the semantic N400 in that it can be elicited in conditions with no semantic task or meaningful stimulus material. It is, however, likely that the auditory N400 incorporates ongoing phonological analysis of words based on the same processes as the PMN. We investigated in two experiments whether the PMN, like the N400, is sensitive to repetition. We predicted that repeated presentation of the same phonological stimulus would result in an attenuation of the PMN even when the stimuli violated task-dependent expectations. For this purpose, we studied a task previously found to elicit a large PMN. Participants were asked to strip an auditory stimulus word of its first consonant (e.g., “/sti:p/ without /s/”) and press a button to indicate whether the pseudoword they heard matched the correct response (/ti:p/). In this task, a strong PMN is typically elicited to all target pseudowords that begin with a different phoneme (e.g. /mi:p/) from the correct response whereas the correct response elicits a minimal PMN. We presented three kinds of targets with equal probability: correct answers, incorrect answers and repeated incorrect answers. The repeated incorrect answers were always the same pseudoword. In Experiment 1, conducted in English, the incorrect answer /kel/ was repeated 120 times. Compared to the correct answer, there was a significant PMN for both incorrect and repeated incorrect targets. However, the magnitude of the PMN was smaller for the repeated incorrect targets (always /kel/). In Experiment 2, conducted in French, the repeated incorrect answer was varied between participants to control for possible effects of the acoustic idiosyncrasies of the target words. The results from Experiment 1 were replicated. In both experiments, the repeated incorrect answer also gave rise to a large posterior positivity, peaking after 600 ms from stimulus onset, possibly reflecting recognition memory for the repeated stimulus. We conclude that the PMN reflects a process that is modified by both task-related expectations and incidental phonological learning during task performance. Conference: MMN 09 Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications, Budapest, Hungary, 4 Apr - 7 Apr, 2009. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Symposium 5: Language and language deficits Citation: Connolly J, Service E, Lefebvre C, Habib D and Jolicoeur P (2009). Attenuation of the phonological mapping negativity (PMN) by stimulus repetition. Conference Abstract: MMN 09 Fifth Conference on Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and its Clinical and Scientific Applications. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.05.084 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 25 Mar 2009; Published Online: 25 Mar 2009. * Correspondence: John Connolly, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, jconnol@mcmaster.ca Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers John Connolly E. Service C. Lefebvre D. Habib P. Jolicoeur Google John Connolly E. Service C. Lefebvre D. Habib P. 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Electrophysiological markers of pre-lexical speech processing: Evidence for bottom–up and top–down effects on spoken word processing

The present study was designed to investigate the electrophysiological consequences of a mismatch between initial phoneme expectations and the actual spoken input. Participants were presented with a word/nonword prompt with the instruction to delete the initial sound (e.g., snap without the / s/; snoth without the / s/) and determine the resulting segment. Following the prompt, an aurally presented response that matched/mismatched expectations (e.g., nap/ tap; noth/ toth) was presented. The Phonological Mapping Negativity (PMN), a response associated with phonological processing, was largest to mismatching responses, and was not dependent on the lexical status of response items. An N400-like response was also largest to mismatching responses; however, in contrast to the PMN, the N400-like response differentiated mismatching words from mismatching nonwords. These findings highlight a functional dissociation between the PMN and N400, and establish the PMN as a neural marker representing the goodness-of-fit between initial phoneme expectations and the actual spoken input.

Semantic priming in schizophrenic inpatients: Neuroleptic effects on the event-related brain potential

The present study was designed to investigate the electrophysiological consequences of a mismatch between initial phoneme expectations and the actual spoken input. Participants were presented with a word/nonword prompt with the instruction to delete the initial sound (e.g., snap without the /s/; snoth without the /s/) and determine the resulting segment. Following the prompt, an aurally presented response that matched/mismatched expectations (e.g., nap/tap; noth/toth) was presented. The Phonological Mapping Negativity (PMN), a response associated with phonological processing, was largest to mismatching responses, and was not dependent on the lexical status of response items. An N400-like response was also largest to mismatching responses; however, in contrast to the PMN, the N400-like response differentiated mismatching words from mismatching nonwords. These findings highlight a functional dissociation between the PMN and N400, and establish the PMN as a neural marker representing the goodness-of-fit between initial phoneme expectations and the actual spoken input.