65 research outputs found
ERPs and task effects in the auditory processing of gender agreement and semantics in French
We investigated task effects on violation ERP responses to Noun-Adjective gender
mismatches and lexical/conceptual semantic mismatches in a combined auditory/visual
paradigm in French. Participants listened to sentences while viewing pictures of objects.
This paradigm was designed to investigate language processing in special populations (e.g.,
children) who may not be able to read or to provide stable behavioral judgment data. Our
main goal was to determine how ERP responses to our target violations might differ
depending on whether participants performed a judgment task (Task) versus listening for
comprehension (No-Task). Characterizing the influence of the presence versus absence of
judgment tasks on violation ERP responses allows us to meaningfully interpret data obtained
using this paradigm without a behavioral task and relate them to judgment-based paradigms
in the ERP literature. We replicated previously observed ERP patterns for semantic and
gender mismatches, and found that the task especially affected the later P600 component
Neurophysiological correlates of musical and prosodic phrasing: shared processing mechanisms and effects of musical expertise
The processing of prosodic phrase boundaries in language is immediately
reflected by a specific event-related potential component called the Closure
Positive Shift (CPS). A component somewhat reminiscent of the CPS in language
has also been reported for musical phrases (i.e., the so-called ‘music CPS’).
However, in previous studies the quantification of the music-CPS as well as
its morphology and timing differed substantially from the characteristics of
the language-CPS. Therefore, the degree of correspondence between cognitive
mechanisms of phrasing in music and in language has remained questionable.
Here, we probed the shared nature of mechanisms underlying musical and
prosodic phrasing by (1) investigating whether the music-CPS is present at
phrase boundary positions where the language-CPS has been originally reported
(i.e., at the onset of the pause between phrases), and (2) comparing the CPS
in music and in language in non-musicians and professional musicians. For the
first time, we report a positive shift at the onset of musical phrase
boundaries that strongly resembles the language-CPS and argue that the post-
boundary ‘music-CPS’ of previous studies may be an entirely distinct ERP
component. Moreover, the language-CPS in musicians was found to be less
prominent than in non-musicians, suggesting more efficient processing of
prosodic phrases in language as a result of higher musical expertise
An ERP study
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is frequently associated with communicative
impairment, regardless of intelligence level or mental age. Impairment of
prosodic processing in particular is a common feature of ASD. Despite
extensive overlap in neural resources involved in prosody and music
processing, music perception seems to be spared in this population. The
present study is the first to investigate prosodic phrasing in ASD in both
language and music, combining event-related brain potential (ERP) and
behavioral methods. We tested phrase boundary processing in language and music
in neuro-typical adults and high-functioning individuals with ASD. We targeted
an ERP response associated with phrase boundary processing in both language
and music – i.e., the Closure Positive Shift (CPS). While a language-CPS was
observed in the neuro-typical group, for ASD participants a smaller response
failed to reach statistical significance. In music, we found a boundary-onset
music-CPS for both groups during pauses between musical phrases. Our results
support the view of preserved processing of musical cues in ASD individuals,
with a corresponding prosodic impairment. This suggests that, despite the
existence of a domain-general processing mechanism (the CPS), key differences
in the integration of features of language and music may lead to the prosodic
impairment in ASD
Identifying linguistic markers of French-speaking teenagers with developmental language disorder : which tasks matter?
Purpose:This research aimed to identify reliable tasks discriminating French-speaking adolescents with developmental language disorder (DLD) from theirpeers with typical language (TL) and to assess which linguistic domains repre-sent areas of particular weakness in DLD. Unlike English, morphosyntax has notbeen identified as a special area of weakness when compared with lexicose-mantics in French preschoolers with DLD. Since there is evidence that subject–verb number agreement is consolidated in later childhood, one might expectmorphosyntax to be a particular weakness and marker of French DLD only in(pre)adolescence.Method:We administered 20 subtasks that assessed linguistic and phonolo-gical working memory skills of two groups: 17 adolescents clinically identifiedas having DLD (M= 14.1 years) and 20 (pre)teens with TL (M= 12.2 years).Using robust statistics that are less affected by outliers, we selected the mostdiscriminating subtasks between our groups, calculated their optimal cutoffscore, and derived diagnostic accuracy statistics. We combined these subtasksin a multivariable model to identify which subtasks contributed the most to theidentification of DLD.Results:Seven subtasks were selected as discriminating between our groups,and three showed outstanding diagnostic accuracy: Recalling Sentences, a multi-word task assessing lexicosemantic skills, and a subject–verb number agreementproduction task. When combined, we found that the latter contributed the mostto our multivariable model.Conclusion:This study provides evidence that the most relevant markers toidentify DLD in French teenagers are tasks assessing lexicosemantics and mor-phosyntactic domains, and that morphosyntax should be considered an impor-tant area of weakness in French-speaking teenagers with DLD
The temporal dynamics of inflected word recognition: a masked ERP priming study of French verbs
Morphological aspects of human language processing have been suggested by some to be
reducible to the combination of orthographic and semantic effects, while others propose that
morphological structure is represented separately from semantics and orthography and
involves distinct neuro-cognitive processing mechanisms. Here we used event-related brain
potentials (ERPs) to investigate semantic, morphological and formal (orthographic)
processing conjointly in a masked priming paradigm. We directly compared morphological to
both semantic and formal/orthographic priming (shared letters) on verbs. Masked priming
was used to reduce strategic effects related to prime perception and to suppress semantic
priming effects. The three types of priming led to distinct ERP and behavioural patterns:
semantic priming was not found, while formal and morphological priming resulted in
diverging ERP patterns. These results are consistent with models of lexical processing that
make reference to morphological structure. We discuss how they fit in with the existing
literature and how unresolved issues could be addressed in further studies
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