The role of domain-general inhibition in inflectional encoding: Producing the past tense

An fMRI study of inflectional encoding in spoken word production: Role of domain-general inhibition

“…In the present article, we addressed the issue of whether in inflectional encoding, regulars are produced by rule application and irregulars through retrieval from associative memory together with inhibition of the regular rule, as proposed by Pinker (1999) and Pinker and Ullman (2002). In previous behavioral experiments (Ferreira et al, 2020), we obtained evidence against the involvement of domain-general inhibition in the production of irregular verbs: Switching between inflecting and reading, but not between regulars and irregulars, yielded an RT cost. Here, we investigated the issue using fMRI and a similar experimental design, testing whether domain-general inhibition areas are activated (Sahin et al, 2006).…”

“…The stimuli in the present experiment were taken from Ferreira et al (2020). Ninety-six Dutch verbs were used as stimuli, 48 with a regular (e.g., werkenwerkte) and 48 with an irregular (e.g., nemennam) first-person singular past-tense.…”

“…Procedure and design were similar to Experiment 2 of Ferreira et al (2020). The experiment had two separate parts, each with two blocks.…”

“…When switching to L2, there is no inhibition to be overcome, and RTs will not be prolonged. In a behavioral study (Ferreira et al, 2020), we used this rationale to test for the presence of inhibition in the production of irregular past-tense forms. If irregular production requires inhibition of the application of the affixation rule, then producing a regular after an irregular past tense should prolong RT, whereas this should not be observed for producing an irregular after a regular.…”

“…We did this in a new fMRI study reported in the present article by testing whether an irregular trial engages the canonical inhibition circuitry, as Sahin et al (2006) claimed. As in our previous behavioral study (Ferreira et al, 2020), participants had to switch between the production of regular and irregular past tenses, or between inflection and reading. If the basal ganglia are involved in inflection as suggested by the dual-route model (Pinker, 1999;Pinker and Ullman, 2002), the left basal ganglia loop (implementing rule application) should be more active for regulars than for irregulars, whereas the right basal ganglia loop (implementing rule inhibition) should be more active for irregulars than for regulars, especially on switch trials.…”