ERP correlates of pre-attentive processing of Cantonese lexical tones: The effects of pitch contour and pitch height

Tsang, Yiu Kei; Shi, Jia; Huang, Jian; Chen, Hsuan-Chih

doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2010.10.035

Cited by 64 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Lexical tone is of further interest because its primary auditory correlate is based on variations in pitch, a multidimensional perceptual attribute that relies on several acoustic features. MMN studies of tone languages have revealed that pitch contour and pitch height are two important features used in early, preattentive lexical tone processing (Chandrasekaran, Gandour, & Krishnan, 2007; Chandrasekaran, Krishnan, & Gandour, 2007; Tsang, Jia, Huang, & Chen, 2011). These findings notwithstanding, any definitive interpretations about cortical pitch processing must be tempered by the fact that the MMN is comprised of both auditory and cognitive mechanisms of frequency change detection in auditory cortex (Maess, Jacobsen, Schroger, & Friederici, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cortical pitch response components index stimulus onset/offset and dynamic features of pitch contours

et al. 2014

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Voice pitch is an important information-bearing component of language that is subject to experience dependent plasticity at both early cortical and subcortical stages of processing. We’ve already demonstrated that pitch onset component (Na) of the cortical pitch response (CPR) is sensitive to flat pitch and its salience. In regards to dynamic pitch, we do not yet know whether the multiple pitch-related transient components of the CPR reflect specific temporal attributes of such stimuli. Here we examine the sensitivity of the multiple transient components of CPR to changes in pitch acceleration associated with the Mandarin high rising lexical tone. CPR responses from Chinese listeners were elicited by three citation forms varying in pitch acceleration and duration. Results showed that the pitch onset component (Na) was invariant to changes in acceleration. In contrast, Na-Pb and Pb-Nb showed a systematic increase in the interpeak latency and decrease in amplitude with increase in pitch acceleration that followed the time course of pitch change across the three stimuli. A strong correlation with pitch acceleration was observed for these two components only – a putative index of pitch-relevant neural activity associated with the more rapidly-changing portions of the pitch contour. Pc-Nc marks unambiguously the stimulus offset. We therefore propose that in the early stages of cortical sensory processing, a series of neural markers flag different temporal attributes of a dynamic pitch contour: onset of temporal regularity (Na); changes in temporal regularity between onset and offset (Na-Pb, Pb-Nb); and offset of temporal regularity (Pc-Nc). At the temporal electrode sites, the stimulus with the most gradual change in pitch acceleration evoked a rightward asymmetry. Yet within the left hemisphere, stimuli with more gradual change were indistinguishable. These findings highlight the emergence of early hemispheric preferences and their functional roles as related to sensory and cognitive properties of the stimulus.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cortical pitch response components index stimulus onset/offset and dynamic features of pitch contours

et al. 2014

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“…In previous studies of MMN, the MMN component typically peaks around 200–250 ms (Näätänen et al, 1978, 2007; Näätänen and Alho, 1997). Researchers usually choose a time window around this peak based on the grand-average waveforms of their particular data, which could include 100–350 ms (e.g., Kaan et al, 2008), 150–300 ms (e.g., Tsang et al, 2011), 230–360 ms (Wang et al, 2013b), and so on. Considering the usual range of MMN’s peak and the grand-average waveforms of the present study, we chose a time window of the MMNs to be 200–350 ms.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Processing of acoustic and phonological information of lexical tones in Mandarin Chinese revealed by mismatch negativity

Wang

et al. 2014

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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The accurate perception of lexical tones in tonal languages involves the processing of both acoustic information and phonological information carried by the tonal signal. In this study we evaluated the relative role of the two types of information in native Chinese speaker’s processing of tones at a preattentive stage with event-related potentials (ERPs), particularly the mismatch negativity (MNN). Specifically, we distinguished the acoustic from the phonological information by manipulating phonological category and acoustic interval of the stimulus materials. We found a significant main effect of phonological category for the peak latency of MMN, but a main effect of both phonological category and acoustic interval for the mean amplitude of MMN. The results indicated that the two types of information, acoustic and phonological, play different roles in the processing of Chinese lexical tones: acoustic information only impacts the extent of tonal processing, while phonological information affects both the extent and the time course of tonal processing. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of neurocognitive processes of phonological processing.

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“…Using the mismatch negativity (MMN), Chinese listeners, relative to English, were more sensitive to pitch contour than pitch height in response to Mandarin tones, indicating that MMN may serve as a neural index of the relative saliency of underlying dimensions of pitch that are differentially weighted by language experience (Chandrasekaran, Gandour, & Krishnan, 2007). In Cantonese, the magnitude and latency of MMN were sensitive to the size of pitch height change, while the latency of P3a (an automatic attention shift induced by the detection of deviant features in the passive oddball paradigm) captured the presence of a change in pitch contour (Tsang, Jia, Huang, & Chen, 2011). In Mandarin, pitch height and contour dimensions associated with lexical tone were reported to be lateralized respectively to the right and left hemispheres (Wang, Wang, & Chen, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language experience enhances early cortical pitch-dependent responses

Krishnan¹,

Gandour²,

Ananthakrishnan³

et al. 2015

Journal of Neurolinguistics

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Pitch processing at cortical and subcortical stages of processing is shaped by language experience. We recently demonstrated that specific components of the cortical pitch response (CPR) index the more rapidly-changing portions of the high rising Tone 2 of Mandarin Chinese, in addition to marking pitch onset and sound offset. In this study, we examine how language experience (Mandarin vs. English) shapes the processing of different temporal attributes of pitch reflected in the CPR components using stimuli representative of within-category variants of Tone 2. Results showed that the magnitude of CPR components (Na-Pb and Pb-Nb) and the correlation between these two components and pitch acceleration were stronger for the Chinese listeners compared to English listeners for stimuli that fell within the range of Tone 2 citation forms. Discriminant function analysis revealed that the Na-Pb component was more than twice as important as Pb-Nb in grouping listeners by language affiliation. In addition, a stronger stimulus-dependent, rightward asymmetry was observed for the Chinese group at the temporal, but not frontal, electrode sites. This finding may reflect selective recruitment of experience-dependent, pitch-specific mechanisms in right auditory cortex to extract more complex, time-varying pitch patterns. Taken together, these findings suggest that long-term language experience shapes early sensory level processing of pitch in the auditory cortex, and that the sensitivity of the CPR may vary depending on the relative linguistic importance of specific temporal attributes of dynamic pitch.

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ERP correlates of pre-attentive processing of Cantonese lexical tones: The effects of pitch contour and pitch height

Cited by 64 publications

References 19 publications

Cortical pitch response components index stimulus onset/offset and dynamic features of pitch contours

Cortical pitch response components index stimulus onset/offset and dynamic features of pitch contours

Processing of acoustic and phonological information of lexical tones in Mandarin Chinese revealed by mismatch negativity

Language experience enhances early cortical pitch-dependent responses

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