scholarly journals Electrophysiological Differentiation of the Effects of Stress and Accent on Lexical Integration in Highly Fluent Bilinguals

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 113
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lewendon ◽  
Anouschka Foltz ◽  
Guillaume Thierry
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Semantic Relatedness ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Speech Comprehension ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Phonological Representations ◽  
Priming Paradigm ◽  
Processing Effort ◽  
Cross Language

Individuals who acquire a second language (L2) after infancy often retain features of their native language (L1) accent. Cross-language priming studies have shown negative effects of L1 accent on L2 comprehension, but the role of specific speech features, such as lexical stress, is mostly unknown. Here, we investigate whether lexical stress and accent differently modulate semantic processing and cross-language lexical activation in Welsh–English bilinguals, given that English and Welsh differ substantially in terms of stress realisation. In an L2 cross-modal priming paradigm, we manipulated the stress pattern and accent of spoken primes, whilst participants made semantic relatedness judgments on visual word targets. Event-related brain potentials revealed a main effect of stress on target integration, such that stimuli with stress patterns compatible with either the L1 or L2 required less processing effort than stimuli with stress incompatible with both Welsh and English. An independent cross-language phonological overlap manipulation revealed an interaction between accent and L1 access. Interestingly, although it increased processing effort, incorrect stress did not significantly modulate semantic priming effects or covert access to L1 phonological representations. Our results are consistent with the concept of language-specific stress templates, and suggest that accent and lexical stress affect speech comprehension mechanisms differentially.

scholarly journals Sex differences in communicative gestures and speech comprehension: an ERP study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
mirella manfredi ◽  
Paulo Boggio
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Speech Comprehension ◽  
N400 Effect ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Late Positivity ◽  
Communicative Gestures

The goal of this study was to investigate whether the semantic processing of the audiovisual combination of communicative gestures with speech differs between men and women. We recorded event-related brain potentials in women and men during the presentation of communicative gestures that were either congruent or incongruent with the speech. Our results showed that incongruent gestures elicited an N400 effect over frontal sites compared to the congruent ones in both groups. Moreover, only females showed an earlier N2 response to incongruent stimuli than congruent ones, while larger sustained negativity and late positivity in response to incongruent stimuli was observed only in males. These results suggest that women rapidly recognize and process audiovisual combinations of communicative gestures and speech (as early as 300 ms) whereas men analysis at the later stages of the process.

Where Is the Beat? The Neural Correlates of Lexical Stress and Rhythmical Well-formedness in Auditory Story Comprehension

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (7) ◽  
pp. 1119-1131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katerina D. Kandylaki ◽  
Karen Henrich ◽  
Arne Nagels ◽  
Tilo Kircher ◽  
Ulrike Domahs ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Stress Pattern ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Story Comprehension ◽  
Speech Comprehension ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Sensorimotor Network ◽  
Electrophysiological Studies ◽  
Stress Patterns ◽  
Domain Independent ◽  
The Brain

While listening to continuous speech, humans process beat information to correctly identify word boundaries. The beats of language are stress patterns that are created by combining lexical (word-specific) stress patterns and the rhythm of a specific language. Sometimes, the lexical stress pattern needs to be altered to obey the rhythm of the language. This study investigated the interplay of lexical stress patterns and rhythmical well-formedness in natural speech with fMRI. Previous electrophysiological studies on cases in which a regular lexical stress pattern may be altered to obtain rhythmical well-formedness showed that even subtle rhythmic deviations are detected by the brain if attention is directed toward prosody. Here, we present a new approach to this phenomenon by having participants listen to contextually rich stories in the absence of a task targeting the manipulation. For the interaction of lexical stress and rhythmical well-formedness, we found one suprathreshold cluster localized between the cerebellum and the brain stem. For the main effect of lexical stress, we found higher BOLD responses to the retained lexical stress pattern in the bilateral SMA, bilateral postcentral gyrus, bilateral middle fontal gyrus, bilateral inferior and right superior parietal lobule, and right precuneus. These results support the view that lexical stress is processed as part of a sensorimotor network of speech comprehension. Moreover, our results connect beat processing in language to domain-independent timing perception.

An Enquiry into the Process of Categorization of Pictures and Words

2003 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 267-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madhubalan Viswanathan ◽  
Terry L. Childers
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Semantic Relatedness ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
The Past ◽  
Word Categorization ◽  
Multiple Routes ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Pictures And Words ◽  
Salient Features

This paper reports a series of experiments conducted to study the categorization of pictures and words. Whereas some studies reported in the past have found a picture advantage in categorization, other studies have yielded no differences between pictures and words This paper used an experimental paradigm designed to overcome some methodological problems to examine picture-word categorization. The results of one experiment were consistent with an advantage for pictures in categorization. To identify the source of the picture advantage in categorization, two more experiments were conducted. Findings suggest that semantic relatedness may play an important role in the categorization of both pictures and words. We explain these findings by suggesting that pictures simultaneously access both their concept and visually salient features whereas words may initially access their concept and may subsequently activate features. Therefore, pictures have an advantage in categorization by offering multiple routes to semantic processing.

Semantic Similarity/Relatedness for Cross Language Plagiarism Detection

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanane Ezzikouri ◽  
Mohammed Erritali ◽  
Mohamed Oukessou
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Similarity ◽  
Semantic Relatedness ◽  
Application Programming Interface ◽  
Plagiarism Detection ◽  
French And English ◽  
Unique Interpretation ◽  
Application Programming ◽  
Cross Language ◽  
Similarity Distance ◽  
Programming Interface

<p>Generally utterances in natural language are highly ambiguous, and a unique interpretation can usually be determined only by taking into account the context in the utterance occurred. Automatically determining the correct sense of a polysemous word is a complicated problem especially in multilingual corpuses. This paper presents an application programming interface for several Semantic Relatedness/Similarity metrics measuring semantic  similarity/distance  between multilingual words  and  concepts, in order to use it after for sentences and paragraphs in Cross Language Plagiarism Detection (CLPD); using WordNet for the English-French and English-Arabic multilingual plagiarism cases.</p>

scholarly journals Pupil Dilation Is Sensitive to Semantic Ambiguity and Acoustic Degradation

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 233121652096406
Author(s):  
Mason Kadem ◽  
Björn Herrmann ◽  
Jennifer M. Rodd ◽  
Ingrid S. Johnsrude
Keyword(s):  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Cognitive Demand ◽  
Semantic Relatedness ◽  
Pupil Dilation ◽  
Probe Word ◽  
Speech Comprehension ◽  
Semantic Ambiguity ◽  
Visual Probe ◽  
Ambiguous Words ◽  
Noisy Background

Speech comprehension is challenged by background noise, acoustic interference, and linguistic factors, such as the presence of words with more than one meaning (homonyms and homophones). Previous work suggests that homophony in spoken language increases cognitive demand. Here, we measured pupil dilation—a physiological index of cognitive demand—while listeners heard high-ambiguity sentences, containing words with more than one meaning, or well-matched low-ambiguity sentences without ambiguous words. This semantic-ambiguity manipulation was crossed with an acoustic manipulation in two experiments. In Experiment 1, sentences were masked with 30-talker babble at 0 and +6 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and in Experiment 2, sentences were heard with or without a pink noise masker at –2 dB SNR. Speech comprehension was measured by asking listeners to judge the semantic relatedness of a visual probe word to the previous sentence. In both experiments, comprehension was lower for high- than for low-ambiguity sentences when SNRs were low. Pupils dilated more when sentences included ambiguous words, even when no noise was added (Experiment 2). Pupil also dilated more when SNRs were low. The effect of masking was larger than the effect of ambiguity for performance and pupil responses. This work demonstrates that the presence of homophones, a condition that is ubiquitous in natural language, increases cognitive demand and reduces intelligibility of speech heard with a noisy background.

The Immediate Processing of Sentences

1977 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. Green
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Speech Signal ◽  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Voluntary Control ◽  
Auditory Signal ◽  
Speech Comprehension ◽  
Integrative Process

Two independent groups of subjects, under instruction orienting them towards understanding or towards memorizing sentences were timed to respond to a brief auditory signal which occurred at some point during the course of a sentence. Latency appeared to be primarily a function of the task, such that the deeper the semantic processing of the sentence the longer the reaction time. Together with other aspects of the data, it is argued that such tasks affect the extent to which a subject retrieves the meanings of the words in a sentence and integrates them at the end of it. Concrete and abstract sentences were processed in fundamentally the same way. The conclusion drawn is that speech comprehension is an integrative process, under voluntary control, which collates together different aspects of the speech signal.

scholarly journals Exploring the Role of Lexical stress in Lexical Recognition

2005 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilma van Donselaar ◽  
Mariëtte Koster ◽  
Anne Cutler
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Auditory Presentation ◽  
Phonological Representations ◽  
Conceptual Representations ◽  
No Inhibition ◽  
Spoken Words

Three cross-modal priming experiments examined the role of suprasegmental information in the processing of spoken words. All primes consisted of truncated spoken Dutch words. Recognition of visually presented word targets was facilitated by prior auditory presentation of the first two syllables of the same words as primes, but only if they were appropriately stressed (e.g., OKTOBER preceded by okTO-); inappropriate stress, compatible with another word (e.g., OKTOBER preceded by OCto-, the beginning of octopus), produced inhibition. Monosyllabic fragments (e.g., OC-) also produced facilitation when appropriately stressed; if inappropriately stressed, they produced neither facilitation nor inhibition. The bisyllabic fragments that were compatible with only one word produced facilitation to semantically associated words, but inappropriate stress caused no inhibition of associates. The results are explained within a model of spoken-word recognition involving competition between simultaneously activated phonological representations followed by activation of separate conceptual representations for strongly supported lexical candidates; at the level of the phonological representations, activation is modulated by both segmental and suprasegmental information.

Evidence for long-term cross-language repetition priming in low fluency Chinese–English bilinguals

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
LI LI ◽  
LEI MO ◽  
RUIMING WANG ◽  
XUEYING LUO ◽  
ZHE CHEN
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Implicit Memory ◽  
Explicit Memory ◽  
Repetition Priming ◽  
First Language ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Priming Paradigm ◽  
Cross Language

Previous studies have found that proficiency in a second language affects how the meanings of words are accessed. Support for this hypothesis is based on data from explicit memory tasks with bilingual participants who know two languages that are relatively similar phonologically and orthographically (e.g., Dutch–English, French–English). The present study tested this hypothesis with Chinese–English bilinguals using an implicit memory task – the cross-language repetition priming paradigm. Consistent with the result of Zeelenberg, R. and Pecher, D. (2003), we obtained reliable effects of long-term cross-language repetition priming using a conceptual implicit memory task. Overall, the four experiments support the Revised Hierarchical Model as they demonstrate that low fluency bilinguals can only access the conceptual representation of the second language via the lexical representation of the first language.

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