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The present study examined whether processing words with affective connotations in a listener's native language may be modulated by accented speech. To address this question, we used the Event Related Potential (ERP) technique and recorded the cerebral activity of Spanish native listeners, who performed a semantic categorization task, while listening to positive, negative and neutral words produced in standard Spanish or in four foreign accents. The behavioral results yielded longer latencies for emotional than for neutral words in both native and foreign-accented speech, with no difference between positive and negative words. The electrophysiological results replicated previous findings from the emotional language literature, with the amplitude of the Late Positive Complex (LPC), associated with emotional language processing, being larger (more positive) for emotional than for neutral words at posterior scalp sites. Interestingly, foreign-accented speech was found to interfere with the processing of positive valence and go along with a negativity bias, possibly suggesting heightened attention to negative words. The manipulation employed in the present study provides an interesting perspective on the effects of accented speech on processing affective-laden information. It shows that higher order semantic processes that involve emotion-related aspects are sensitive to a speaker's accent.

We examined the impact of the effects of dyslexia on various processing and cognitive components (e.g., reading speed and accuracy) in a language with high phonological and orthographic consistency. Greek dyslexic children were compared with a chronological age-matched group on tasks that tested participants' phonological and orthographic awareness during reading and spelling, as well as their efficiency to detect a specific target-letter during a sequential visual search task. Dyslexic children showed impaired reading and spelling that was reflected in slow reading speed and error-prone performance, especially for non-words. Eye movement measures of text reading also provided supporting evidence for a reading deficit, with dyslexic participants producing more fixations and longer fixation duration as opposed to non-dyslexic participants. The results of the visual search task showed similar performance between the two groups, but when they were compared with the results of text reading, dyslexic participants were found to be able to process fewer stimuli (i.e., letters) at each fixation than non-dyslexics. Our findings further suggest that, although Greek dyslexics have the advantage of a consistent orthographic system which facilitates acquisition of reading and phonological awareness, they demonstrate more impaired access to orthographic forms than dyslexics of other transparent orthographies.