Short-Term Habituation of Auditory N1 in Spoken Word-Forms Is Modulated by Phonological Information

Abstract

Short-term auditory habituation is typically reflected by decreased but recoverable amplitudes of the N1 component of event-related potentials to repeated stimuli. It remains less well understood whether and how N1 habituation is modulated by the human cognition. The current study aims to further test for the potential modulatory roles of phonological information carried by spoken word-forms. Two phonological variables, namely lexicality (real versus pseudoword-form) and usage frequency (high versus low frequency), are considered and combined factorially, yielding four types of monosyllabic Mandarin spoken word-forms. Each type consists of 10 items (i.e., word-forms). The stimuli were passively presented to native Mandarin speakers in trains of five (S1–S5), while their EEG was recorded. The peak amplitudes of N1 to the same type of speech stimuli were calculated for each position by averaging the trains extracted from the EEG recording. Then, the N1 habituation was quantified for the two electrodes of interest (C3 and C4) in each repetitive presentation position (S2–S5). The results showed that the N1 habituation in low-frequency pseudo word-forms was consistently greater than in low-frequency real word-forms and high-frequency pseudo word-forms, respectively, at the fourth presentation (S4). The results suggest the first evidence that different types of phonological information (i.e., lexicality and usage frequency) modulate N1 habituation, interactively. Sensory filtering is proposed as a candidate mechanism for mediating between the processing of phonological information and the short-term habituation of auditory N1.

Multivariate pattern analysis of EEG reveals nuanced impact of negation on sentence processing in the N400 and later time windows

“…This is an interesting finding that was not predicted. In the ERP literature, there is substantial literature regarding the impact of higher level (and temporally later) factors impacts on lower level processes (Bendixen et al., 2014; Obleser & Kotz, 2011; Pulvermüller et al., 2004; Todorovic & de Lange, 2012; Yue et al., 2022). Within the semantic domain, the N400 as revealed by lexical retrieval (low vs high frequency words) may also be modulated by context or predictability (Dambacher et al., 2012; Huizeling et al., 2022; Kretzschmar et al., 2015; Osorio et al., 2022; Payne et al., 2015).…”

Representational level matters for tone-word recognition: Evidence from form priming

“…The lexicality of tone-manipulated pseudowords can be assumed to be "knocked out" 2 from their original base words without breaking any of the sublexical, phonological rules. Furthermore, the sublexical nature of such pseudowords has been thoroughly tested in previous studies of our own, resulting in differential behavioural and electrophysiological responses to real words and tone-manipulated pseudowords in Mandarin, during spoken-word perception (Yue et al, 2014(Yue et al, , 2017(Yue et al, , 2022.…”

“…2 Knock out is a figurative speech, referring to gene knockout technology, which removes a gene from an organism to prevent its expression or to study its function. differential behavioural and electrophysiological responses to real words and tonemanipulated pseudowords in Mandarin, during spoken-word perception (Yue et al, 2014(Yue et al, , 2017(Yue et al, , 2022.…”