Categorical processing of german vowel quantity
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1
Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Reseach, Germany
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2
ZAS, Germany
The present study investigates the neural and behavioral processing of duration in the German Vowel /a/ using synthesized disyllabic nonsense words with different vowel durations. The vowel /a/ was chosen since its long and short cognates are differentiated in German merely on the basis of vowel duration, unlike high and mid vowels that have additional differences in formant structure. By means of an identification test a sharp category border was found at 105.9ms in the duration continuum from short to long category, associated with a local peak in response time. Furthermore, an adaptive discrimination test, applied to the entire continuum, showed a minimum of the just-noticeable-difference for vowel duration at the category border. In an MEG study, the continuum of the disyllabic words was presented in randomized order. Besides two M50-M100 complexes in response to the first and the second syllable, the ERP data showed a secondary M50/M100-like deflection in case vowel duration exceeded the duration of the short category, which was not observed in a duration-matched non-speech control condition. Furthermore, the amplitude strength of the M50 to the second syllable (M50-S2) in the speech stimulus was attenuated for prototypical vowel durations, but enhanced for ambiguous durations. In contrast to non-speech durations, the behavioral and neural data indicate a strong impact of phonological vowel categories on auditory processing in speech. The secondary positive/negative deflection might be interpreted as an additional phonological "event" or "slot", indicating a nonlinear categorical difference in the processing across short and long vowels. The attenuation and enhancement of the M50-S2 seem to reflect a phonological expectation for prototypical vowel duration.
Keywords:
Language,
Vowel duration
Conference:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Poster Sessions: Neural Bases of Language
Citation:
Tomaschek
F,
Truckenbrodt
H and
Hertrich
I
(2011). Categorical processing of german vowel quantity.
Conference Abstract:
XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI).
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00199
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Received:
21 Nov 2011;
Published Online:
28 Nov 2011.
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Correspondence:
Dr. Fabian Tomaschek, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Reseach, Tübingen, Germany, fabian.tomaschek@uni-tuebingen.de