Heidrun Bien

Frequency effects in the production of Dutch deverbal adjectives and inflected verbs

In two experiments, we studied the role of frequency information in the production of deverbal adjectives and inflected verbs in Dutch. Naming latencies were triggered in a position–response association task and analysed using stepwise mixed-effects modelling, with subject and word as crossed random effects. The production latency of deverbal adjectives was affected by the cumulative frequencies of their verbal stems, arguing for decomposition and against full listing. However, for the inflected verbs, there was an inhibitory effect of Inflectional Entropy, and a nonlinear effect of Lemma Frequency. Additional effects of Position-specific Neighbourhood Density and Cohort Entropy in both types of words underline the importance of paradigmatic relations in the mental lexicon. Taken together, the data suggest that the word-form level does neither contain full forms nor strictly separated morphemes, but rather morphemes with links to phonologically and—in case of inflected verbs—morphologically related word forms.

Processing Nasals with and without Consecutive Context Phonemes: Evidence from Explicit Categorization and the N100.

With neurophysiological (N100) and explicit behavioral measures (two-alternative forced-choice categorization), we investigated how the processing of nasal segments of German is affected by following context phonemes and their place of articulation. We investigated pre-lexical processing, with speech stimuli excised from naturally spoken utterances. Participants heard nasals (/n/, /m/, and place-assimilated /n′/), both with and without a subsequent context phoneme. Context phonemes were voiced or voiceless, and either shared or did not share their place of articulation with the nasals. The explicit forced-choice categorization of the isolated nasals showed /n′/ to be in-between the clear categorizations for /n/ and /m/. In early, implicit processing, /m/ had a significantly higher N100 amplitude than both /n/ and /n′/, with, most importantly, no difference between the latter two. When presented in context (e.g., /nb/, /mt/), explicit categorizations were affected by both the nasal and the context phoneme: a consecutive labial led to more M-categorizations, a following alveolar to more N-categorizations. The early processing of the nasal/+context stimuli in the N100 showed strong effects of context, modulated by the type of preceding nasal. Crucially, the context effects on assimilated nasals /n′/ were clearly different to effects on /m/, and indistinguishable from effects on /n/. The grouping of the isolated nasals in the N100 replicates previous findings, using magnetoencephalography and a different set of stimuli. Importantly, the same grouping was observed in the nasal/+context stimuli. Most models that deal with assimilation are either challenged by the mere existence of phonemic context effects, and/or use mechanisms that rely on lexical information. Our results support the existence, and early activation, of pre-lexical categories for phonemic segments. We suggest that due to experience with assimilation, specific speech-sound categories are flexible enough to accept (or even ignore) inappropriate place cues, in particular when the appropriate place information is still present in the signal.

Open-source software to conduct online rating studies

Several software programs exist to assist researchers in setting up online questionnaires. Existing tools are of little help for delivering online rating studies, for which it is often desirable to collect data from participants for only a subset of a stimulus set. OR-Vis enables researchers to quickly set up online rating studies by supplying the set of items to be rated, the number of stimuli an individual participant responds to, the number of participants an item is shown to, and the rating questions. The software then generates and delivers unique questionnaires for each participant, while managing the data collection process. The present article describes OR-Vis, its installation process, and how to use it to gather data. OR-Vis is open-source software and can be downloaded from www.orvis.uni-muenster.de.

Implicit and explicit categorization of speech sounds--dissociating behavioural and neurophysiological data.

During speech perception, sound is mapped onto abstract phonological categories. Assimilation of place or manner of articulation in connected speech challenges this categorization. Does assimilation result in categorizations that need to be corrected later on, or does the system get it right immediately? Participants were presented with isolated nasals (/m/ labial, /n/ alveolar, and /n’/ assimilated towards labial place of articulation), extracted from naturally produced German utterances. Behavioural two‐alternative forced‐choice tasks showed that participants could correctly categorize the /n/s and /m/s. The assimilated nasals were predominantly categorized as /m/, indicative of a perceived change in place. A pitch variation additively influenced the categorizations. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we analysed the N100m elicited by the same stimuli without a categorization task. In sharp contrast to the behavioural data, this early, automatic brain response ignored the assimilation in the surface form and reflected the underlying category. As shown by distributed source modelling, phonemic differences were processed exclusively left‐laterally (temporally and parietally), whereas the pitch variation was processed in temporal regions bilaterally. In conclusion, explicit categorization draws attention to the surface form – to the changed place and acoustic information. The N100m reflects automatic categorization, which exploits any hint of an underlying feature.

A Neurophysiological Investigation of Non-native Phoneme Perception by Dutch and German Listeners

The Mismatch Negativity (MMN) response has often been used to measure memory traces for phonological representations and to show effects of long-term native language (L1) experience on neural organization. We know little about whether phonological representations of non-native (L2) phonemes are modulated by experience with distinct non-native accents. We used MMN to examine effects of experience with L2-accented speech on auditory brain responses. Specifically, we tested whether it is long-term experience with language-specific L2 pronunciations or instead acoustic similarity between L2 speech sounds that modulates non-native phoneme perception. We registered MMN responses of Dutch and German proficient L2 speakers of English to the English interdental fricative /𝜃/ and compared it to its non-native pronunciations /s/ (typical pronunciation of /𝜃/ for German speakers) and /t/ (typical pronunciation of /𝜃/ for Dutch speakers). Dutch and German listeners heard the English pseudoword thond and its pronunciation deviants sond and tond. We computed the identity Mismatch Negativity (iMMN) by analyzing the difference in ERPs when the deviants were the frequent vs. the infrequent stimulus for the respective group of L2 listeners. For both groups, tond and sond elicited mismatch effects of comparable size. Overall, the results suggest that experience with deviant pronunciations of L2 speech sounds in foreign-accented speech does not alter auditory memory traces. Instead, non-native phoneme perception seems to be modulated by acoustic similarity between speech sounds rather than by experience with typical L2 pronunciation patterns.

Do syllables play a role in German speech perception? Behavioral and electrophysiological data from primed lexical decision.

We investigated the role of the syllable during speech processing in German, in an auditory-auditory fragment priming study with lexical decision and simultaneous EEG registration. Spoken fragment primes either shared segments (related) with the spoken targets or not (unrelated), and this segmental overlap either corresponded to the first syllable of the target (e.g., /teis/ – /teisti/), or not (e.g., /teis/ – /teistləs/). Similar prime conditions applied for word and pseudoword targets. Lexical decision latencies revealed facilitation due to related fragments that corresponded to the first syllable of the target (/teis/ – /teisti/). Despite segmental overlap, there were no positive effects for related fragments that mismatched the first syllable. No facilitation was observed for pseudowords. The EEG analyses showed a consistent effect of relatedness, independent of syllabic match, from 200 to 500 ms, including the P350 and N400 windows. Moreover, this held for words and pseudowords that differed however in the N400 window. The only specific effect of syllabic match for related prime—target pairs was observed in the time window from 200 to 300 ms. We discuss the nature and potential origin of these effects, and their relevance for speech processing and lexical access.

Neurophysiological and behavioural correlates of the categorization of assimilated nasals in speech perception - an intriguing dissociation

Schedule of Poster Presentations 281 SU-AM Neural networks of emotional discourse comprehension, Annick Razafimandimby, M. Vigneau, V. Beaucousin, G. Perchey, M.R. Turbelin, N. Delcroix, M. Joliot, F. Lamberton , G. Simon, F. Crivello, B. Mazoyer, N. Tzourio-Mazoyer , CI-NAPS, Centre for Imaging-Neurosicences and Applications to Pathologies, CNRS, CEA, Caen University, Paris Descartes University, France