An ERP investigation of dichotic repetition priming with temporally overlapping stimuli

Abstract

The present study used event-related potentials to examine effects of prime-target repetition using a dichotic priming paradigm. Participants monitored a stream of target words in the right attended ear for occasional animal names, and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to non-animal words that were either unrelated to, or a repetition of, prime words presented to the left ear. Prime words were spoken in a different voice and had a lower intensity than target words, and prime word onset began 50 ms before target word onset. Repetition priming effects were observed in the ERPs starting around 150 ms post-target onset, and continued to influence processing for the duration of target stimuli. These priming effects provide further evidence in favor of parallel processing of overlapping dichotic stimuli, at least up to the level of some form of sublexical phonological representation, a likely locus for the integration of the two sources of information.

On the locus of talker-specificity effects in spoken word recognition: an ERP study with dichotic priming

“…Hence, it appears that talker-specific information does not affect the pre-lexical stage of spoken words processing. This key finding is in line with Grainger and Holcomb's (2015) proposal that the earliest repetition priming effects obtained in dichotic repetition priming are subtended by source-invariant sublexical phonological representations.…”

“…More precisely, the first repetition priming effect was seen on a positive-going waveform, a P200-like component, with repeated primes eliciting less positive-going waveforms than control primes. Because this first repetition effect roughly occurs during the processing of the first phoneme of the targets, it likely reflects a pre-lexical stage of processing (see Grainger & Holcomb, 2015, for an early repetition priming effect in a similar time-window 4 ). Repetition priming effects presumably occur because the processing of the target words involves the use of pre-lexical representations that were already activated during prime processing.…”

“…For example, the facilitation that occurs when spoken primes and targets are phonologically related has been interpreted as reflecting the repeated activation of the same form-based representation either at a pre-lexical or at a lexical level, or at both levels of processing (i.e. Grainger & Holcomb, 2015;McQueen & Sereno, 2005;Norris et al, 2002).…”

“…Moreover, we predicted that if talker specific representations interact with abstract representations during all the stages of lexical processing going from activation to the selection of the target word, this interaction could be observed both on the P350 and N400 components. To minimize strategic anticipations of the target words from the prime words, we used a dichotic presentation of the primes and the targets, with primes presented in the left ear at a lower intensity than the targets, and the targets presented in the right ear (see Grainger & Holcomb, 2015). To avoid contamination of ERPs by motor responses on the critical words, participants engaged in a go/no-go lexical decision task in which they were instructed to respond only when they heard a non-word in their right ear (i.e.…”

Rapid modulation of spoken word recognition by visual primes

“…The timing, direction, and topography of the present effect (see Figure 4) clearly distinguishes it from N/P150 and N250 priming effects found with visual masked primes and visual targets (e.g., Chauncey, Holcomb, & Grainger, 2008; see Grainger & Holcomb, 2009, for review). Furthermore, although the timing is similar, the direction and topography of the effect distinguishes it from the earliest repetition priming effects found with auditory primes and targets using a dichotic listening procedure (Grainger & Holcomb, 2015). Therefore, although the timing of the early cross-modal priming effect points to sublexical phonological processing as a likely source, it is clear that the manner in which such sublexical phonology is activated by prime stimuli (via orthographic representations or via acoustic representations) greatly determines the way such processing manifests itself in the ERP waveforms.…”