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Updated: Jun 12, 2026
Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology
Published on: June 29, 2021
Effect of task-irrelevant high-speed verbal stimulation on a visual/verbal word-discrimination task: an event-related
Jun-ichi Uemura1, Minoru Hoshiyama
1Nagoya University, School of Health Sciences, 1-1-20 Daiko-Minami, Higashi-ku, Nagoya 461-8673, Japan.
Objectives:
We investigated whether incomprehensible high-speed auditory speech stimulation was processed and interacted with visual-word discrimination processing. We hypothesised that an interaction might indicate the capacity of working memory (WM) to perform the temporal processing of auditory verbal information.
Methods:
We recorded P300 for a visual-word discrimination Oddball paradigm in 14 healthy subjects. Auditory speech and reversed speech stimulation were presented at various speeds as task-irrelevant stimuli during the P300 tasks.
Results:
The P300 latency was prolonged under forward high-speed speech stimuli (× 2.5 and × 3.5) compared with the standard speed and white noise, but there was no effect of reversed speech stimuli on the P300 latency during the word-discrimination paradigm.
Conclusions:
We considered that high-speed speech stimulation was processed without conscious comprehension and competed with verbal processing during the visual-word-discrimination task, possibly by interfering with the use of WM.
Significance:
The present study shows the capacity of the brain to process high-speed verbal stimulation and the interaction with a visual-verbal task.
