Brain oscillations during semantic evaluation of speech

Shahin, Antoine J.; Picton, Terence W.; Miller, Lee M.

doi:10.1016/j.bandc.2009.02.008

Cited by 119 publications

(102 citation statements)

References 52 publications

(86 reference statements)

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“…Hertrich et al (2015) examined spectrotemporal characteristics of the MEG signal time-locked to the onset of presupposition triggers and found a suppression of spectral power within the alpha band (from 6 to 16 Hz) for infelicitous (4.a) vs. felicitous (4.b) sentences across two time-windows: 0 -500 ms and 2000 ms -2500 ms. The reduction of alpha activity is generally associated with increased mental load and cognitive effort (Bastiaansen & Hagoort, 2006; Klimesch, 1996;Shahin, Picton, & Miller, 2009).Although the timing of presupposition processing did not closely mirror the timing 7 reported by Kirsten et al (2014), the authors provided a similar explanation of the biphasic pattern that they observed. In particular, the initial suppression of alpha power (0 -500 ms) was taken to reflect violations of lexical expectancy, and the later one (2000 -2500 ms) was linked with attempts to reinterpret presupposition triggers within the given context.…”

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confidence: 79%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Processing temporal presuppositions: an event-related potential study

Jouravlev¹,

Stearns

Bergen³

et al. 2016

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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The ability to efficiently process presuppositions, which contain information that the speaker believes to be in the background to the conversation, is essential for effective communication. To get a deeper understanding of the nature and the time-course of temporal presupposition processing, we examined event-related potential (ERPs) evoked by the word again in two types of sentence contexts. The word again was presented in contexts that supported a presupposition (e.g., Jake had tipped a maid at the hotel once before. Today he tipped a maid at the hotel again…) or violated it (e.g., Jake had never tipped a maid at the hotel before. Today he tipped a maid at the hotel again…). The presupposition violation was associated with increased amplitudes of the P3b/P600 but not the N400 component. We argue for the centrality of the P3b/P600 component for presupposition processing. These findings demonstrate rapid integration of lexical presuppositions with contextual knowledge.Keywords: temporal presupposition, ERPs, P3b/ P600, N400, presupposition violation 3 IntroductionNatural language is highly adaptive: the very same message can be used to convey many distinct meanings depending on the communicative context. This context-sensitivity is one of the defining characteristics of language. One important way in which communicative contexts differ is with respect to what information is already shared among the participants in a conversation. Consider the use of the definite determiner the in sentence (1).(1) Mary saw the tiger.Which tiger Mary saw is highly context-dependent. For example, if we are at a zoo, then this sentence will likely convey that Mary saw the tiger at the zoo. In contrast, if a tiger is on the loose in town, then the sentence will likely convey that Mary saw that tiger.Critically, however, the determiner the in (1) carries the presupposition that there exists a unique tiger in the context. If there is more than one salient tiger in the context, or no tigers at all, then the sentence cannot be felicitously used, and its presupposition will have been violated. More generally, presuppositions impose requirements on the conversational context. If a sentence carries a presupposition, then it will only be felicitous if the context satisfies that presupposition (Caffi, 2006;Heim, 1983;1992; Kamp, 2008; Katz, 1973;Simons, 2006; Van Der Sandt, 1992).Presuppositions are "triggered" by a distinct class of words, referred to as presupposition triggers. In English, the words the, stop, and again, among others, act as presupposition triggers. These words signal the presence of shared background knowledge. For example, in (2), the trigger word stop asserts that the action of smoking was terminated at a certain time point and presupposes that the action has taken place 4 before that point.(2) John stopped smoking last year.In (3), the sentence asserts that the action of tipping occurred at certain time point, and the word again presupposes that this action was also performed on a previous occasion.(3) Jake t...

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confidence: 79%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Processing temporal presuppositions: an event-related potential study

Jouravlev¹,

Stearns

Bergen³

et al. 2016

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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“…The lack of alpha suppression that arises after participants listened to severely degraded speech could reflect neural oscillators that keep alpha power high to rule out erroneous activations in relevant language-and meaning-related areas (Obleser & Weisz, 2012) and is mostly observed after a full linguistic utterance (Klimesch et al, 2007;Shahin, Picton, & Miller, 2009). Another recent study demonstrated a parametric suppression in alpha band activity as items increasingly matched real words, with lowered functional inhibition for more word-like input (Strauß, Kotz, et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alpha and gamma band oscillations index differential processing of acoustically reduced and full forms

Drijvers

Mulder²,

Ernestus

2016

Brain and Language

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Reduced forms like yeshay for yesterday often occur in conversations. Previous behavioral research reported a processing advantage for full over reduced forms. The present study investigated whether this processing advantage is reflected in a modulation of alpha (8)(9)(10)(11)(12) Hz) and gamma (30+ Hz) band activity. In three electrophysiological experiments, participants listened to full and reduced forms in isolation (Experiment 1), sentence-final position (Experiment 2), or mid-sentence position (Experiment 3). Alpha power was larger in response to reduced forms than to full forms, but only in Experiments 1 and 2. We interpret these increases in alpha power as reflections of higher auditory cognitive load. In all experiments, gamma power only increased in response to full forms, which we interpret as showing that lexical activation spreads more quickly through the semantic network for full than for reduced forms. These results confirm a processing advantage for full forms, especially in non-medial sentence position.3

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“…Studies examining EEG oscillatory activity, which has been implicated in the processing of complex auditory features Hannemann et al 2007;Morillon et al 2012;Shahin et al 2009b), showed that an increase in beta (14 -30 Hz) and gamma (Ͼ30 Hz) oscillatory activity reflected binding of AV percepts (Keil et al 2011;Senkowski et al 2007). In Keil et al (2011), beta activity was localized to distributed brain regions, including the superior temporal cortex (STC).…”

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confidence: 99%

Putative mechanisms mediating tolerance for audiovisual stimulus onset asynchrony

Bhat

Miller

Pitt

et al. 2015

Journal of Neurophysiology

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Bhat J, Miller LM, Pitt MA, Shahin AJ. Putative mechanisms mediating tolerance for audiovisual stimulus onset asynchrony. J Neurophysiol 113: [1437][1438][1439][1440][1441][1442][1443][1444][1445][1446][1447][1448][1449][1450] 2015. First published December 10, 2014; doi:10.1152/jn.00200.2014.-Audiovisual (AV) speech perception is robust to temporal asynchronies between visual and auditory stimuli. We investigated the neural mechanisms that facilitate tolerance for audiovisual stimulus onset asynchrony (AVOA) with EEG. Individuals were presented with AV words that were asynchronous in onsets of voice and mouth movement and judged whether they were synchronous or not. Behaviorally, individuals tolerated (perceived as synchronous) longer AVOAs when mouth movement preceded the speech (V-A) stimuli than when the speech preceded mouth movement (A-V). Neurophysiologically, the P1-N1-P2 auditory evoked potentials (AEPs), time-locked to sound onsets and known to arise in and surrounding the primary auditory cortex (PAC), were smaller for the in-sync than the out-of-sync percepts. Spectral power of oscillatory activity in the beta band (14 -30 Hz) following the AEPs was larger during the in-sync than out-of-sync perception for both A-V and V-A conditions. However, alpha power (8 -14 Hz), also following AEPs, was larger for the in-sync than out-of-sync percepts only in the V-A condition. These results demonstrate that AVOA tolerance is enhanced by inhibiting low-level auditory activity (e.g., AEPs representing generators in and surrounding PAC) that code for acoustic onsets. By reducing sensitivity to acoustic onsets, visual-to-auditory onset mapping is weakened, allowing for greater AVOA tolerance. In contrast, beta and alpha results suggest the involvement of higherlevel neural processes that may code for language cues (phonetic, lexical), selective attention, and binding of AV percepts, allowing for wider neural windows of temporal integration, i.e., greater AVOA tolerance.audiovisual stimulus onset asynchrony; auditory evoked potentials; alpha band activity; beta band activity; EEG; oscillatory activity SPEECH IS THE MOST IMPORTANT communication tool we have.

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Brain oscillations during semantic evaluation of speech

Cited by 119 publications

References 52 publications

Processing temporal presuppositions: an event-related potential study

Processing temporal presuppositions: an event-related potential study

Alpha and gamma band oscillations index differential processing of acoustically reduced and full forms

Putative mechanisms mediating tolerance for audiovisual stimulus onset asynchrony

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