Temporal relation between top-down and bottom-up processing in lexical tone perception

Abstract

Speech perception entails both top-down processing that relies primarily on language experience and bottom-up processing that depends mainly on instant auditory input. Previous models of speech perception often claim that bottom-up processing occurs in an early time window, whereas top-down processing takes place in a late time window after stimulus onset. In this paper, we evaluated the temporal relation of both types of processing in lexical tone perception. We conducted a series of event-related potential (ERP) experiments that recruited Mandarin participants and adopted three experimental paradigms, namely dichotic listening, lexical decision with phonological priming, and semantic violation. By systematically analyzing the lateralization patterns of the early and late ERP components that are observed in these experiments, we discovered that: auditory processing of pitch variations in tones, as a bottom-up effect, elicited greater right hemisphere activation; in contrast, linguistic processing of lexical tones, as a top-down effect, elicited greater left hemisphere activation. We also found that both types of processing co-occurred in both the early (around 200 ms) and late (around 300–500 ms) time windows, which supported a parallel model of lexical tone perception. Unlike the previous view that language processing is special and performed by dedicated neural circuitry, our study have elucidated that language processing can be decomposed into general cognitive functions (e.g., sensory and memory) and share neural resources with these functions.

What Makes Lexical Tone Special: A Reverse Accessing Model for Tonal Speech Perception

“…Accumulating evidence suggests that perception of tone in speech involves a complicated, multi-level cortical network (Shuai and Gong, 2014;Roll et al, 2015;Si et al, 2017;Soderstrom et al, 2017;Schremm et al, 2018). For example, event-related potential (ERP) studies (Shuai and Gong, 2014) indicate temporally overlapping but spatially separate top-down, linguistic processing and bottom-up, auditory processing of lexical tones with linguistic processing lateralized toward the left hemisphere and auditory processing toward the right hemisphere. Cortical surface recordings (Si et al, 2017) further distinguished a distributed cooperative network consisting of bilateral temporal and frontal motor areas in native Chinese speakers passively listening to tones in an oddball paradigm, with strong temporal-on-motor influence in the right hemisphere.…”

Glendonald Auditory Screening Procedure (GASP): marcadores clínicos de desenvolvimento das habilidades de reconhecimento e compreensão auditiva em crianças usuárias de implante coclear

“…Performance of children in GASP Test 6, which assesses the ability to listen for at least 60 months of CI use (CNS), with an impact on auditory processing abilities and the development of spoken language. Auditory perception consists of two types of processing: the bottom-up, which comprises sensory information, and the top-down, which encompasses aspects such as cognition, memory, language and attention (14,25) .…”

The role of segmental and tonal information in visual word recognition with learners of Chinese

“…However, it is important to note that segments are more left lateralised than lexical tones (X. Shuai & Gong, 2014). Given that lexical information is processed dominantly in the left hemisphere (McDermotta, Petersen, Watson, & Ojemanna, 2003;Liebentral, Binder, Spitzer, Possing, & Medler, 2005), it may take less effort to access the segmental information and semantic information during lexical processing compared with the tonal information.…”

“…Taken together, these findings suggest that (1) both native and non‐native Mandarin speakers process tone as a linguistic unit and (2) even a short period of training may lead to cortical modification among L2 learners. However, it is important to note that segments are more left lateralised than lexical tones (X. Li et al, ; Shuai & Gong, ). Given that lexical information is processed dominantly in the left hemisphere (McDermotta, Petersen, Watson, & Ojemanna, ; Liebentral, Binder, Spitzer, Possing, & Medler, ), it may take less effort to access the segmental information and semantic information during lexical processing compared with the tonal information.…”