Subtitled Videos and Mismatch Negativity (MMN) Investigations of Spoken Word Processing

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the presence of subtitles on a distracting, silent video affects the automatic mismatch negativity (MMN) response to simple tones, consonant-vowel (CV) nonwords, or CV words. Two experiments were conducted in this study, each including ten healthy young adult subjects. Experiment 1 investigated the effects of subtitles on the MMN response to simple tones (differing in frequency, duration, and intensity) and speech stimuli (CV nonwords and CV words with a /d/-/g/ contrast). Experiment 2 investigated the effects of subtitles on the MMN response to a variety of CV nonword and word contrasts that incorporated both small (e.g., /d/ vs. /g/) and/or large (e.g., /e:/ vs. /el/) acoustic deviances. The results indicated that the presence or absence of subtitles on the distracting silent video had no effect on the amplitude of the MMN or P3a responses to simple tones, CV nonwords, or CV words. In addition, the results also indicated that movement artifacts may be statistically reduced by the presence of subtitles on a distracting silent video. The implications of these results are that more "engaging" (i.e., subtitled) silent videos can be used as a distraction task for investigations into MMN responses to speech and nonspeech stimuli in young adult subjects, without affecting the amplitude of the responses.

Mismatch negativity (MMN) elicited by duration deviations in children with reading disorder, attention deficit or both

“…MMN does not seem to be dependent on attention and can be recorded while the participant is concentrating, for example, on a video (Jacobsen and Schröger, 2003;Pettigrew et al, 2004), a book (Sussman et al, 2003;Tervaniemi et al, 1999), or video game (Woods et al, 1992). In addition, MMN has even been recorded in sleeping participants (Campbell et al, 1991;Martynova et al, 2003;Nashida et al, 2000;Sallinen et al, 1994).…”

Effects of age and background noise on processing a mistuned harmonic in an otherwise periodic complex sound

“…As mentioned earlier, this design allowed us to examine the impact of noise on cortical activity elicited by stimuli while minimizing the influence of topedown processes on AEF amplitude. The use of muted subtitled movies has been shown to effectively capture attention without interfering with auditory processing (Pettigrew et al, 2004). To minimize movement, participants lay down throughout the recording.…”

Breaking the wave: Effects of attention and learning on concurrent sound perception

“…This manipulation was designed to test whether Df 0 changes in ERPs depend on focused attention, thereby allowing us to clarify the stage at which attention affects concurrent vowel perception. The use of muted subtitled movies is important because the text dialogue effectively captures attention without interfering with auditory processing (Pettigrew et al, 2004). Fig.…”