The influence of rhythmic (ir)regularities on speech processing: Evidence from an ERP study on German phrases

Bohn, Karen; Knaus, Johannes; Wiese, Richard; Domahs, Ulrike

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.01.006

Cited by 43 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 43 publications

(111 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The N400 rhyme effects in poetry are in line with previously reported auditory rhyme effects in common language (e.g., Coch et al, 2005;Davids et al, 2011;Praamstra et al, 1994;Praamstra & Stegeman, 1993). Similarly, the meter effect is in accordance with previous N400 and P600 findings concerning how regular meter facilitates auditory lexical, semantic, and syntactic sentence processing (for the N400, see, e.g., Bohn et al, 2013;Magne et al, 2007Magne et al, , 2010Rothermich et al, 2010Rothermich et al, , 2012; for the P600, see, e.g., Roncaglia-Denissen et al, 2013;Schmidt-Kassow & Kotz, 2009b; for both the N400 and P600, see Luo & Zhou, 2010;Marie et al, 2011;McCauley et al, 2013;Ystad et al, 2007). The present results also align well with the results of Bohn et al Those authors reasoned that irregular but possible metrical stress in spoken language enhances processing costs, whereas regular meter reduces processing costs.…”

Section: Ease Of Processing Is Enhanced By Poetic Language Usesupporting

confidence: 91%

“…Moreover, meter plays an important role in language acquisition (e.g., Jusczyk, 1999), as well as syntactic (e.g., SchmidtKassow & Kotz, 2009b) and semantic (e.g., Magne et al, 2007;Rothermich, Schmidt-Kassow, & Kotz, 2012) auditory language processing. Various studies have reported that the N400 response to single words and to words in sentences is reduced when the words are presented in a metrically regular context (e.g., Bohn, Knaus, Wiese, & Domahs, 2013;Magne, Gordon, & Midha, 2010;Magne et al, 2007;Rothermich et al, 2012;Rothermich, Schmidt-Kassow, Schwartze, & Kotz, 2010). For example, Magne et al (2007) investigated how regular meter influences semantic processing in spoken French.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent findings by Rothermich et al (2012) corroborate these findings and their interpretation. Finally, an ERP study by Bohn et al (2013) that manipulated word stress in auditory language processing found that, where an irregular but possible meter was costly (i.e., they found an enhanced N400 response to an unexpected stress change), regular meter was not. This suggests that regular meter reduces processing costs.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Aesthetic appreciation of poetry correlates with ease of processing in event-related potentials

Obermeier

Kotz

Jessen

et al. 2015

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Rhetorical theory suggests that rhythmic and metrical features of language substantially contribute to persuading, moving, and pleasing an audience. A potential explanation of these effects is offered by Bcognitive fluency theory,^which stipulates that recurring patterns (e.g., meter) enhance perceptual fluency and can lead to greater aesthetic appreciation. In this article, we explore these two assertions by investigating the effects of meter and rhyme in the reception of poetry by means of event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Participants listened to four versions of lyrical stanzas that varied in terms of meter and rhyme, and rated the stanzas for rhythmicity and aesthetic liking. The behavioral and ERP results were in accord with enhanced liking and rhythmicity ratings for metered and rhyming stanzas. The metered and rhyming stanzas elicited smaller N400/P600 ERP responses than their nonmetered, nonrhyming, or nonmetered and nonrhyming counterparts. In addition, the N400 and P600 effects for the lyrical stanzas correlated with aesthetic liking effects (metered-nonmetered), implying that modulation of the N400 and P600 has a direct bearing on the aesthetic appreciation of lyrical stanzas. We suggest that these effects are indicative of perceptual-fluency-enhanced aesthetic liking, as postulated by cognitive fluency theory.

show abstract

Section: Ease Of Processing Is Enhanced By Poetic Language Usesupporting

confidence: 91%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Aesthetic appreciation of poetry correlates with ease of processing in event-related potentials

Obermeier

Kotz

Jessen

et al. 2015

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Only one stressed syllable per word is allowed and secondary stress can occur in compounds, but not in single-root words, e.g., l j n-ˌo-zaˈvod 'linen factory' vs. kolbaˈsa 'sausage' (Gouskova, 2010). Phonetic correlates of stress include duration, vowel quality and intensity (Zlatoustova, 1954(Zlatoustova, , 1981Bondarko, 1977).…”

Section: Russian Stress -Basic Factsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To test this, we conducted two experiments on the processing of Russian nouns employing event-related potentials (ERPs). The experimental paradigm used in the present study has been developed by Domahs and colleagues in their studies on stress perception in German, Turkish, and Polish, which demonstrated that even subtle prosodic violations can lead to reliable EEG effects (Knaus, Wiese, & Janßen, 2007;Domahs, Wiese, Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, & Schlesewsky, 2008;Domahs, Knaus, Orzechowska, & Wiese, 2012;Domahs, Genc, Knaus, Wiese, & Kabak, 2013;Bohn, Knaus, Wiese, & Domahs, 2013). The present study will apply this methodology to investigate the processing of stress in different Russian noun stems (Experiment 1) and to study the shape of the default foot type in Russian (Experiment 2).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The lexical representation of word stress in Russian

Mołczanow¹,

Domahs

Knaus

et al. 2013

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper explores the processing of metrical structure in Russian, a language with free lexical stress. According to the existing theoretical accounts, not all Russian stems are specified for accent in the lexicon. The present study employs event-related potentials (ERPs) to find evidence to support the underlying distinction into accented and unaccented stem types. The results of two EEG experiments using a stress violation paradigm reveal that Russian listeners are highly sensitive to changes of metrical structure and that prosodic manipulations may impede lexical retrieval. In the first experiment, in which the stimuli were not given prior to auditory presentation, metrical violations evoked a pronounced N400 effect for all stem types, and a late positivity for one of the stem types, indicating a difference in stress processing. In the second experiment in which the stimuli were visually introduced before auditory presentation, stress shifts to the second syllable induced late positive component (LPC) indicating an ease in the evaluation of the metrical form. Overall, the present findings partially support the division into lexically specified and unspecified Russian accent types. In addition, the results show a strong correlation between the patterning of ERP components and the direction of stress shift, suggesting a trochee to be the default foot type in Russian.

show abstract

Marking Stress ExPLICitly in Written English Fosters Rhythm in the Reader's Inner Voice

Gross

Winegard

Plotkowski

2017

Reading Research Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Spoken English has a stress-alternating rhythm that is not marked in its orthography. In two experiments, the authors evaluated whether stylistic alterations to print that marked stress pulses fostered the rendering of rhythm (experiment 1) and stress (experiment 2) during silent reading. In experiment 1, silent readers rated the helpfulness of the stylistic alterations appearing in the last line of poems. In experiment 2, silent readers rated the helpfulness of the stylistic alterations appearing in heteronyms embedded in prose. As predicted by linguistic theories, when the stylistic alterations mapped onto the rhythmic pulses of the poems, and the lexically stressed syllables of the heteronyms, silent readers rated these alterations as more helpful compared with the incongruous conditions. In experiment 2, readers' inner voices were more tuned to the prosodic nuances of the first syllable than the second in the bisyllabic heteronyms. This prosodic tuning for the first syllable in a word was likely afforded by the strong tendency for stress to appear word-initially. In addition, the stylistically marked stress was viewed as more helpful in the early half of the sentence, when readers likely recruited more bottom-up processes. In both experiments, prior exposure to poetry was related to a refined prosodic awareness. In experiment 2, exposure to poetry predicted participants' prosody sensitivity, after controlling for the other predictors of academic achievement. The authors' ongoing studies are evaluating whether marking stress explicitly in written English might aid struggling readers and late speakers of English.

show abstract

The influence of rhythmic (ir)regularities on speech processing: Evidence from an ERP study on German phrases

Cited by 43 publications

References 43 publications

Aesthetic appreciation of poetry correlates with ease of processing in event-related potentials

Aesthetic appreciation of poetry correlates with ease of processing in event-related potentials

The lexical representation of word stress in Russian

Marking Stress ExPLICitly in Written English Fosters Rhythm in the Reader's Inner Voice

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About