Meaning before grammar: A review of ERP experiments on the neurodevelopmental origins of semantic processing

Morgan, Elena; Meer, Audrey van der; Vulchanova, Mila; Blasí, Damián E.; Baggio, Giosué

doi:10.3758/s13423-019-01677-8

Cited by 19 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 187 publications

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“…However, another possibility is that the lack of a word-level response for task-irrelevant speech indicates that it does not undergo full lexical analysis. Counter to the linear intuition that syntactic structuring depends on identifying individual lexemes, there is substantial evidence that lexical and syntactic processes are separable and dissociable cognitive processes, that rely on partially different neural substrates ( Friederici and Kotz, 2003 ; Hagoort, 2003 ; Humphries et al, 2006 ; Nelson et al, 2017 ; Schell et al, 2017 ; Pylkkänen, 2019 ; Morgan et al, 2020 ). Indeed, a recent frequency-tagging study showed that syntactic phrasal structure can be identified (generating a phrase-level peak in the neural spectrum) even in the complete absence of lexical information ( Getz et al, 2018 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic processing of task-irrelevant speech at a cocktail party

Yahav

Golumbic

2021

eLife

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Paying attention to one speaker in noisy environments can be extremely difficult, because to-be-attended and task-irrelevant speech compete for processing resources. We tested whether this competition is restricted to acoustic-phonetic interference or if it extends to competition for linguistic processing as well. Neural activity was recorded using Magnetoencephalography as human participants were instructed to attended to natural speech presented to one ear, and task-irrelevant stimuli were presented to the other. Task-irrelevant stimuli consisted either of random sequences of syllables, or syllables structured to form coherent sentences, using hierarchical frequency-tagging. We find that the phrasal structure of structured task-irrelevant stimuli was represented in the neural response in left inferior frontal and posterior parietal regions, indicating that selective attention does not fully eliminate linguistic processing of task-irrelevant speech. Additionally, neural tracking of to-be-attended speech in left inferior frontal regions was enhanced when competing with structured task-irrelevant stimuli, suggesting inherent competition between them for linguistic processing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic processing of task-irrelevant speech at a cocktail party

Yahav

Golumbic

2021

eLife

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“…However, another possibility is related to the proposed functional dissociation between lexical processes involved in word-identification, and syntactic structure-building processes 60,122 . Counter to the notion that individual lexemes are necessary 'building blocks' for syntactic structuring, lexical and syntactic processes are actually considered to be separable cognitive processes, that also rely on partially different neural substrates 102,[123][124][125] . Indeed, as shown recently, syntactic phrasal structure can be identified even in the complete absence of lexical information 126 , which further supports the possibility that phrasal boundaries can be detected irrespective of full lexical analysis.…”

Section: Why No Word-level Response?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic processing of task-irrelevant speech at a Cocktail Party

Yahav

Golumbic

2020

Preprint

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Paying attention to one speaker in noisy environments can be extremely difficult. This is because task-irrelevant speech competes for processing resources with attended speech. However, whether this competition is restricted to acoustic-phonetic interference, or if it extends to competition for linguistic processing as well, remains highly debated. To address this debate, here we test whether task-irrelevant speech sounds are integrated over time to form hierarchical representations of lexical and syntactic structures.Neural activity was recorded using Magnetoencephalography (MEG) during a dichotic listening task, where human participants attended to natural speech presented to one ear, and task-irrelevant stimuli were presented to the other. Task-irrelevant stimuli consisted either of random sequences of syllables (Non-Structured), or syllables ordered to form coherent sentences (Structured). Using hierarchical frequency-tagging, the neural signature of different linguistic-hierarchies within the Structured stimuli – namely words, phrases and sentences – can be uniquely discerned from the neural response.We find that, indeed, the phrasal structure of task-irrelevant stimuli was represented in the neural response, primarily in left inferior frontal and posterior parietal regions. Moreover, neural tracking of attended speech in left inferior frontal regions was enhanced when task-irrelevant stimuli were linguistically structured. This pattern suggests that syntactic structurebuilding processes are applied to task-irrelevant speech, at least under these circumstances, and that selective attention does not fully eliminate linguistic processing of task-irrelevant speech. Rather, the inherent competition for linguistic processing resources between the two streams likely results in the increased listening effort experienced when trying to focus selective attention in multi-speaker contexts.Significance statementThis study addresses the fundamental question of how the brain deals with competing speech in noisy environments. Specifically, we ask: when one attempts to focus their attention on a particular speaker, what level of linguistic processing is applied to other, task-irrelevant speech? By measuring neural activity, we find evidence that the phrasal structure of task-irrelevant speech is indeed discerned, indicating that linguistic information is integrated over time and undergoes some syntactic analysis. Moreover, neural responses to attended speech were also enhanced in speech-processing regions, when presented together with comprehensible yet task-irrelevant speech. These results nicely demonstrate the inherent competition for linguistic processing resources among concurrent speech, providing evidence that selective attention does not fully eliminate linguistic processing of task-irrelevant speech.

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“…Understanding whether there is development is necessary to advance our theory-building. Some theorize for instance that semantic processing abilities emerge prior to the onset of and are therefore considered independent of grammatical and syntactic processing skills (e.g., Morgan et al, 2020 ). Moreover, it prevents the field from making clear predictions on how to analyze the infant N400.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of the N400 for Word Learning in the First 2 Years of Life: A Systematic Review

et al. 2021

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The N400 ERP component is a direct neural index of word meaning. Studies show that the N400 component is already present in early infancy, albeit often delayed. Many researchers capitalize on this finding, using the N400 component to better understand how early language acquisition unfolds. However, variability in how researchers quantify the N400 makes it difficult to set clear predictions or build theory. Not much is known about how the N400 component develops in the first 2 years of life in terms of its latency and topographical distributions, nor do we know how task parameters affect its appearance. In the current paper we carry out a systematic review, comparing over 30 studies that report the N400 component as a proxy of semantic processing elicited in infants between 0 and 24 months old who listened to linguistic stimuli. Our main finding is that there is large heterogeneity across semantic-priming studies in reported characteristics of the N400, both with respect to latency and to distributions. With age, the onset of the N400 insignificantly decreases, while its offset slightly increases. We also examined whether the N400 appears different for recently-acquired novel words vs. existing words: both situations reveal heterogeneity across studies. Finally, we inspected whether the N400 was modulated differently with studies using a between-subject design. In infants with more proficient language skills the N400 was more often present or showed itself here with earlier latency, compared to their peers; but no consistent patterns were observed for distribution characteristics of the N400. One limitation of the current review is that we compared studies that widely differed in choice of EEG recordings, pre-processing steps and quantification of the N400, all of which could affect the characteristics of the infant N400. The field is still missing research that systematically tests development of the N400 using the same paradigm across infancy.

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Meaning before grammar: A review of ERP experiments on the neurodevelopmental origins of semantic processing

Cited by 19 publications

References 187 publications

Linguistic processing of task-irrelevant speech at a cocktail party

Linguistic processing of task-irrelevant speech at a cocktail party

Linguistic processing of task-irrelevant speech at a Cocktail Party

Development of the N400 for Word Learning in the First 2 Years of Life: A Systematic Review

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