Phonological representations and repetition priming

An ubiquitous phenomenon in psychology is the `repetition effect': a repeated stimulus is processed better on the second occurrence than on the first. Yet, what counts as a repetition? When a spoken word is repeated, is it the acoustic shape or the linguistic type that matters? In the present study, we contrasted the contribution of acoustic and phonological features by using participants with different linguistic backgrounds: they came from two populations sharing a common vocabulary (Catalan) yet possessing different phonemic systems. They performed a lexical decision task with lists containing words that were repeated verbatim, as well as words that were repeated with one phonetic feature changed. The feature changes were phonemic, i.e. linguistically relevant, for one population, but not for the other. The results revealed that the repetition effect was modulated by linguistic, not acoustic, similarity: it depended on the subjects' phonemic system

Variability in L2 phonemic learning originates from speech-specific capabilities : an MMN study on late bilinguals

People differ in their ability to perceive second language (L2) sounds. In early bilinguals the variability in learning L2 phonemes stems from speech-specific capabilities (Díaz, Baus, Escera, Costa & Sebastián-Gallés, 2008). The present study addresses whether speech-specific capabilities similarly explain variability in late bilinguals. Event-related potentials were recorded (using a design similar to Díaz et al., 2008) in two groups of late Dutch-English bilinguals who were good or poor in overtly discriminating the L2 English vowels /[...]-æ/. The mismatch negativity, an index of discrimination sensitivity, was similar between the groups in conditions involving pure tones (of different length, frequency, and presentation order) but was attenuated in poor L2 perceivers for native, unknown, and L2 phonemes. These results suggest that variability in L2 phonemic learning originates from speech-specific capabilities and imply a continuity of L2 phonemic learning mechanisms throughout the lifespan.This work was supported by the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under REA grant agreement n° 32867 and a postdoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Government (Juan de la Cierva fellowship) to B.D., a Veni grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) toM.B., a grant from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007- 2013): ERG grant agreement number 323961 (UNDER CONTROL) and Collaborative grant FP7-2013-613465 (ATHEME) to N.S.G. and by grants from the SpanishMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI 2012 – 34071; SEJ2009-09072) and the Catalan Government (SGR 2014–1210; SGR2009-11) awarded to N.S.G. and C.E. N.S.G. and C.E. received the prize ‘ICREA Acadèmia’ for excellence in research, funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya. The authors want to thank Xavier Mayoral for his technical support and Robert F. de Menezes for comments on the manuscript.peer-reviewe

Infants’ representation of asymmetric social influence

In social groups, some individuals have more influence than others, for example, because they are learned from or because they coordinate collective actions. Identifying these influential individuals is crucial to learn about one’s social environment. Here, we tested whether infants represent asymmetric social influence among individuals from observing the imitation of movements in the absence of any observable coercion or order. We defined social influence in terms of Granger causality; that is, if A influences B, then past behaviors of A contain information that predicts the behaviors and mental states of B above and beyond the information contained in the past behaviors and mental states of B alone. Infants (12-, 15-, and 18-month-olds) were familiarized with agents (imitators) influenced by the actions of another one (target). During the test, the infants observed either an imitator who was no longer influenced by the target (incongruent test) or the target who was not influenced by an imitator (neutral test). The participants looked significantly longer at the incongruent test than at the neutral test. This result shows that infants represent and generalize individuals’ potential to influence others’ actions and that they are sensitive to the asymmetric nature of social influence; upon learning that A influences B, they expect that the influence of A over B will remain stronger than the influence of B over A in a novel context. Because of the pervasiveness of social influence in many social interactions and relationships, its representation during infancy is fundamental to understand and predict others’ behaviors.Published versio

stimuli

stimuli are the originals from Gómez, Berent, Benavides-Varela, Bion, Cattarossi, Nespor & Mehler (2014). Language universals at birth. PNAS, 111(16), 5837-5841