%A Hilton,Matt %A Räling,Romy %A Wartenburger,Isabell %A Elsner,Birgit %D 2019 %J Frontiers in Psychology %C %F %G English %K Closure Positive Shift (CPS),speech segmentation,Event - Related Potentials (ERP),action segmentation,prosodic boundary cues,Prosody processing,kinematic boundary cues,action processing %Q %R 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01566 %W %L %M %P %7 %8 2019-July-16 %9 Original Research %# %! Boundary cues in speech and action %* %< %T Parallels in Processing Boundary Cues in Speech and Action %U https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01566 %V 10 %0 JOURNAL ARTICLE %@ 1664-1078 %X Speech and action sequences are continuous streams of information that can be segmented into sub-units. In both domains, this segmentation can be facilitated by perceptual cues contained within the information stream. In speech, prosodic cues (e.g., a pause, pre-boundary lengthening, and pitch rise) mark boundaries between words and phrases, while boundaries between actions of an action sequence can be marked by kinematic cues (e.g., a pause, pre-boundary deceleration). The processing of prosodic boundary cues evokes an Event-related Potentials (ERP) component known as the Closure Positive Shift (CPS), and it is possible that the CPS reflects domain-general cognitive processes involved in segmentation, given that the CPS is also evoked by boundaries between subunits of non-speech auditory stimuli. This study further probed the domain-generality of the CPS and its underlying processes by investigating electrophysiological correlates of the processing of boundary cues in sequences of spoken verbs (auditory stimuli; Experiment 1; N = 23 adults) and actions (visual stimuli; Experiment 2; N = 23 adults). The EEG data from both experiments revealed a CPS-like broadly distributed positivity during the 250 ms prior to the onset of the post-boundary word or action, indicating similar electrophysiological correlates of boundary processing across domains, suggesting that the cognitive processes underlying speech and action segmentation might also be shared.