Early effects of neighborhood density and phonotactic probability of spoken words on event-related potentials

Lexical mediation of phonotactic frequency effects on spoken word recognition: A Granger causality analysis of MRI-constrained MEG/EEG data

“…They suggest that the earlier component reflects phonotactic frequency and the latter component reflects neighborhood driven competition effects. This interpretation of the earlier component is consistent with results showing that initial phoneme frequency, a phonotactic frequency measure, influences the latency of the P2 component (Hunter, 2013), and Pylkkänen et al’s (2002) interpretation of their results. Hunter did not examine the effects of phonotactic frequency-neighborhood during the late N400 interval, but did find sustained effects of these manipulations during a 370–430 ms window.…”

“…Low phonotactic frequency items overlap with fewer lexical candidates and so provide more resolution. It is notable that other work has shown that high phonotactic frequency words and nonwords (from large neighborhoods) produce stronger activation than their lower phonotactic frequency counterparts in lexical decision as indexed by the amplitude of the P2 component (240–300 ms) (Hunter, 2013). Significantly, they also produce stronger activation as a function of the frequency of the initial phoneme from 127–163 ms post stimulus onset, before lexical neighborhood effects become a factor.…”

“…The onset was chosen to allow Kalman filter predictions to stabilize, and to capture early evoked responses beginning with the N1/M100 auditory potential. The endpoint was chosen based on evidence from MEG, ERP and eyetracking results that show that sensitivity to manipulations of phonotactic frequency or neighborhood density for spoken words between 200 ms and 500 ms for visually presented (Pylkkänen et al, 2002; Stockall, Stringfellow, & Marantz, 2004) and auditorily presented words (Dufour et al, 2013; Hunter, 2013; MacGregor, Pulvermuller, van Casteren, & Shtyrov, 2012). We report all analyses related to the WORD and LOW ENTROPY NONWORD conditions here.…”

“…Finally, the latency of M350, measured in the interval between 300–400 ms post onset, places it after the likely onset of lexical activation, which is estimated to be close to 200 ms based on evidence from auditory gating, fragment priming, and eyetracking (Allopenna, Magnuson, & Tanenhaus, 1998; Magnuson, Dixon, Tanenhaus, & Aslin, 2007a; Marslen-Wilson, 1990; Marslen-Wilson & Zwitserlood, 1989). Other ERP studies have shown earlier sensitivity to phonotactic frequency-density manipulations including the phonological mismatch negativity (PMN) (250–330 ms) (Dufour, Brunelliere, & Frauenfelder, 2013), and P2/P200 (190–250 ms) (Cheng, Schafer, & Riddell, 2014; Hunter, 2013). All of these results suggest that phonotactic frequency or phonological neighborhood sensitivity has a timecourse that closely parallels lexical access.…”

Using network science in the language sciences and clinic

“…Finally, both electro- and magneto-physiological components have been identified for the processing of stimuli that vary in phonotactic probability (Hunter, 2013; Pylkkänen, Stringfellow, & Marantz, 2002). …”