How does reading direction modulate perceptual asymmetry effects?

The mismatch negativity (MMN) of the auditory ERP/ERF has been shown to be sensitive to both phonetic and phonological contrasts. However, potential asymmetry effects and effects of the immediate phonetic contexts on this neural sensitivity are understudied phenomena.Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we attempted to address this lacuna by investigating native Danish listeners’ MMNm to the phonological contrast between the consonants /t/ and /d/ in two different phonetic contexts in Danish: one word-initial, preserving the contrast’s phonemic status, and another word- final, neutralizing it.We found no support for effects of the immediate phonetic context on the MMNm. However, we observed an asymmetry effect for the phonological contrast: Hearing [t] among [d]s elicited a significantly stronger MMNm than hearing [d] among [t]s. This asymmetry effect was mirrored in a behavioral oddball-detection task showing reduced sensitivity for hearing [d] among [t]s. We discuss both psychoacoustic aspects and phonological underspecification as potential explanations.

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Is the Future the Right Time?

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000036 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 57 (4) ◽

pp. 308-314 ◽

Cited By ~ 96

Author(s):

Marc Ouellet ◽

Julio Santiago ◽

Ziv Israeli ◽

Shai Gabay

Keyword(s):

Auditory Task ◽

English Speakers ◽

Visual Modality ◽

Opposite Pattern ◽

Time Line ◽

Temporal Reference ◽

Left Hand ◽

Reading Direction ◽

Mental Time Line ◽

The Right

Spanish and English speakers tend to conceptualize time as running from left to right along a mental line. Previous research suggests that this representational strategy arises from the participants’ exposure to a left-to-right writing system. However, direct evidence supporting this assertion suffers from several limitations and relies only on the visual modality. This study subjected to a direct test the reading hypothesis using an auditory task. Participants from two groups (Spanish and Hebrew) differing in the directionality of their orthographic system had to discriminate temporal reference (past or future) of verbs and adverbs (referring to either past or future) auditorily presented to either the left or right ear by pressing a left or a right key. Spanish participants were faster responding to past words with the left hand and to future words with the right hand, whereas Hebrew participants showed the opposite pattern. Our results demonstrate that the left-right mapping of time is not restricted to the visual modality and that the direction of reading accounts for the preferred directionality of the mental time line. These results are discussed in the context of a possible mechanism underlying the effects of reading direction on highly abstract conceptual representations.

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