Auditory Event-Related Potentials during Phonetic and Semantic Processing in Children

Abstract

This study was designed to follow the time course of different levels of linguistic processing using auditory event-related potentials (AERPs). A hierarchical set of acoustically controlled stimuli was used to elicit AERPs in 20 normal children who performed discrimination tasks involving pure tones, phonetic ‘easy’ and ‘difficult’ stimuli and semantic stimuli. Results show that (1) AERP latencies were similar for phonetic ‘easy’ and ‘difficult’ stimuli, (2) prolonged P₂, N₂ and P₃ latencies characterized semantic processing compared to phonetic processing, (3) a late negativity was elicited during semantic processing only, (4) P₃ amplitudes were larger over the left compared to right scalp during linguistic processing (phonetic and semantic) but were similar during nonlinguistic processing (pure tones) and (5) reaction time was found to be longest for semantic processing whereas performance accuracy was found to be an insensitive measure. These results provide insight into brain processes underlying the perception of speech. Furthermore, they support a dual model of speech perception that includes parallel and serial processing.

The development of the N1 and N2 components in auditory oddball paradigms: a systematic review with narrative analysis and suggested normative values

“…Others used duration auditory oddball (Shelley et al 1999;Segalowitz et al 2001;Bortoletto et al 2011;Wetzel et al 2011;Neuhaus et al 2013) and few intensity auditory oddball (Anderer et al 1996(Anderer et al , 1998aWang and Wang 2001;Wang et al 2005;Barry et al 2006). Only two papers elicited N1 and N2 with speech stimuli (Henkin et al 2002;Toscano et al 2010), due to the scarce data and type of stimuli they were not considered in the regression analysis.…”

Cortical Neural Activity Underlying Speech Perception in Postlingual Adult Cochlear Implant Recipients

“…The selection of stimuli was based on a previous study of auditory phonetic contrast perception in Hebrew-speaking children with CI. Results indicated that: (1) vowel place perception yielded the highest scores, (2) place of articulation was the most difficult and yielded the lowest scores, (3) vowel height perception was reduced compared to vowel place, (4) voicing was difficult to perceive after implantation, however, it was predicted to plateau at 90% after 9 years of CI use [Kishon-Rabin et al, 2002]. Neurophysiologic data from Hebrew-speaking children provided further support for the hierarchy: vowel place, voicing, vowel height, and place of articulation [Henkin et al, 2008].…”

“…The fact that P3 of CI recipients was similar to that recorded from NH subjects in the easier vowel discrimination task suggests that these stimuli may not be sensitive to the differences in central auditory processing between the two groups. On the other hand, the prolonged or absent P3 in the consonant discrimination tasks may reflect auditory processing difficulties of CI recipients in general and of 'poor' CI recipients in particular [Kutas et al, 1977;Kraus et al, 1995;Maiste et al, 1995;Henkin et al, 2002;Roman et al, 2004;Kelly et al, 2005].…”

“…temporal or spectral) [Kishon-Rabin et al, 2002;Henkin et al, 2008] in a group of postlingual CI recipients and a group of NH controls. Two additional goals were:…”

Auditory event-related potentials in children with benign epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes

“…AERPs provide objective measures of central auditory processing. These scalp recorded potentials reflect activation of different neuronal populations that are suggested to contribute to auditory discrimination (N1), attention allocation and phonological categorization (N2), automatic pre-attentive discrimination and perception, and echoic memory (MMN) (Näätänen, 1995;Liasis et al, 1999Liasis et al, , 2001Henkin et al, 2002).…”