Auditory Discrimination Between Function Words in Children and Adults: A Mismatch Negativity Study

Strotseva-Feinschmidt, Anna; Cunitz, Katrin; Friederici, Angela D.; Gunter, Thomas C.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01930

Cited by 14 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…Negativities in oddball paradigms distributed at a late time window have been reported as late MMNs (e.g., Korpilahti et al, 1995 ; Zachau et al, 2005 ) or late discriminative negativities (LDNs; Cheour et al, 2001 ; Čeponienė et al, 2002 ; Martynova et al, 2003 ; Strotseva-Feinschmidt et al, 2015 ; Hestvik and Durvasula, 2016 ). The LDN normally appears with the traditional MMN, but it can also appear independently ( Strotseva-Feinschmidt et al, 2015 ). The LDN is more frequently found in children than in adults and is shown to decrease ( Bishop et al, 2011 ) or disappear ( Strotseva-Feinschmidt et al, 2015 ) with development into adulthood.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The LDN normally appears with the traditional MMN, but it can also appear independently ( Strotseva-Feinschmidt et al, 2015 ). The LDN is more frequently found in children than in adults and is shown to decrease ( Bishop et al, 2011 ) or disappear ( Strotseva-Feinschmidt et al, 2015 ) with development into adulthood. In adults, the LDN spatial distribution is difficult to characterize.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Extracting Phonetic Features From Natural Classes: A Mismatch Negativity Study of Mandarin Chinese Retroflex Consonants

Monahan

2021

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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How speech sounds are represented in the brain is not fully understood. The mismatch negativity (MMN) has proven to be a powerful tool in this regard. The MMN event-related potential is elicited by a deviant stimulus embedded within a series of repeating standard stimuli. Listeners construct auditory memory representations of these standards despite acoustic variability. In most designs that test speech sounds, however, this variation is typically intra-category: All standards belong to the same phonetic category. In the current paper, inter-category variation is presented in the standards. These standards vary in manner of articulation but share a common phonetic feature. In the standard retroflex experimental block, Mandarin Chinese speaking participants are presented with a series of “standard” consonants that share the feature [retroflex], interrupted by infrequent non-retroflex deviants. In the non-retroflex standard experimental block, non-retroflex standards are interrupted by infrequent retroflex deviants. The within-block MMN was calculated, as was the identity MMN (iMMN) to account for intrinsic differences in responses to the stimuli. We only observed a within-block MMN to the non-retroflex deviant embedded in the standard retroflex block. This suggests that listeners extract [retroflex] despite significant inter-category variation. In the non-retroflex standard block, because there is little on which to base a coherent auditory memory representation, no within-block MMN was observed. The iMMN to the retroflex was observed in a late time-window at centro-parieto-occipital electrode sites instead of fronto-central electrodes, where the MMN is typically observed, potentially reflecting the increased difficulty posed by the added variation in the standards. In short, participants can construct auditory memory representations despite significant acoustic and inter-category phonological variation so long as a shared phonetic feature binds them together.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extracting Phonetic Features From Natural Classes: A Mismatch Negativity Study of Mandarin Chinese Retroflex Consonants

Monahan

2021

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…There, it was argued that the later negativity might reflect the added task difficulty involved with having to group various phonetic categories with one another based on a single phonetic feature. Negative deflections in this study also occurred around 316 ms -440 ms post-stimulus onset, which is later than the normal MMN window (Čeponienė et al, 2002;Cheour et al, 2001;Martynova et al, 2003;Strotseva-Feinschmidt et al, 2015). Late negativities have been observed in both speech (Datta et al, 2020;Fu & Monahan, 2021;Hestvik & Durvasula, 2016) and non-speech paradigms (Peter et al, 2012;Zachau et al, 2005).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 41%

Unified Coding of Spectral and Temporal Phonetic Cues: Electrophysiological Evidence for Abstract Phonological Features

Monahan

Schertz

et al. 2022

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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Spoken word recognition models and phonological theory propose that abstract features play a central role in speech processing. It remains unknown, however, whether auditory cortex encodes linguistic features in a manner beyond the phonetic properties of the speech sounds themselves. We took advantage of the fact that English phonology functionally codes stops and fricatives as voiced or voiceless with two distinct phonetic cues: Fricatives use a spectral cue, whereas stops use a temporal cue. Evidence that these cues can be grouped together would indicate the disjunctive coding of distinct phonetic cues into a functionally defined abstract phonological feature. In English, the voicing feature, which distinguishes the consonants [s] and [t] from [z] and [d], respectively, is hypothesized to be specified only for voiceless consonants (e.g., [s t]). Here, participants listened to syllables in a many-to-one oddball design, while their EEG was recorded. In one block, both voiceless stops and fricatives were the standards. In the other block, both voiced stops and fricatives were the standards. A critical design element was the presence of intercategory variation within the standards. Therefore, a many-to-one relationship, which is necessary to elicit an MMN, existed only if the stop and fricative standards were grouped together. In addition to the ERPs, event-related spectral power was also analyzed. Results showed an MMN effect in the voiceless standards block—an asymmetric MMN—in a time window consistent with processing in auditory cortex, as well as increased prestimulus beta-band oscillatory power to voiceless standards. These findings suggest that (i) there is an auditory memory trace of the standards based on the shared (voiceless) feature, which is only functionally defined; (ii) voiced consonants are underspecified; and (iii) features can serve as a basis for predictive processing. Taken together, these results point toward auditory cortex's ability to functionally code distinct phonetic cues together and suggest that abstract features can be used to parse the continuous acoustic signal.

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“…Late negativities have been observed in both speech (Datta et al, 2020;Fu & Monahan, 2021;Hestvik & Durvasula, 2016) and non-speech paradigms (Peter et al, 2012;Zachau et al, 2005). These late negativities typically appear with the traditional MMN but can also appear independently (Strotseva-Feinschmidt et al, 2015). Bishop et al, (2011) suggest that late negativities might appear as a result of additional processing required by certain features of stimuli that are difficult to detect.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unified Coding of Spectral and Temporal Phonetic Cues: Electrophysiological Evidence for Abstract Phonological Features

Monahan¹,

Schertz²,

Fu³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Understanding how the brain represents speech sounds is necessary to delineate the mapping between the acoustic signal and words stored in long-term memory. Spoken word recognition models and phonological theory propose that abstract features are linguistic units that play a central role in speech processing. The current goal was to determine whether the brain represents abstract phonological features. English phonology functionally codes stops and fricatives as voiced or voiceless. Fricatives and stops, however, encode voicing in distinct phonetic manners. Fricatives use a spectral cue, while stops use a temporal cue. Participants listened to syllables in a many-to-one oddball design while their EEG was recorded. A critical design element was the presence of inter-category variation within the standards. In one block, both voiceless stops and fricatives were the standard. In the other block, both voiced stops and fricatives were the standards. A many-to-one relationship exists only if the standards are grouped together. Oscillatory activity was also measured. Results show an MMN effect in the voiceless standards block–an asymmetric MMN–and increased beta-band oscillatory power prior to voiceless standards stimulus-onset. These findings suggest that (i) the brain constructed an auditory memory trace of the standards based on the shared [voiceless] feature, which is only functionally defined, (ii) voiced consonants are underspecified and, (iii) features can serve as a basis for predictive processing. Taken together, these results point toward the brain’s ability to functionally code distinct phonetic cues together and that abstract features can be used to parse the continuous acoustic signal.

show abstract

Auditory Discrimination Between Function Words in Children and Adults: A Mismatch Negativity Study

Cited by 14 publications

References 58 publications

Extracting Phonetic Features From Natural Classes: A Mismatch Negativity Study of Mandarin Chinese Retroflex Consonants

Extracting Phonetic Features From Natural Classes: A Mismatch Negativity Study of Mandarin Chinese Retroflex Consonants

Unified Coding of Spectral and Temporal Phonetic Cues: Electrophysiological Evidence for Abstract Phonological Features

Unified Coding of Spectral and Temporal Phonetic Cues: Electrophysiological Evidence for Abstract Phonological Features

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