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