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Updated: Jun 10, 2026

Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology
Published on: June 29, 2021
Phonological universals constrain the processing of nonspeech stimuli
Iris Berent1, Evan Balaban, Tracy Lennertz
1Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, 125 Nightingale Hall, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115-5000, USA. i.berent@neu.edu
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Domain-specific systems are hypothetically specialized with respect to the outputs they compute and the inputs they allow (Fodor, 1983). Here, we examine whether these 2 conditions for specialization are dissociable. An initial experiment suggests that English speakers could extend a putatively universal phonological restriction to inputs identified as nonspeech. A subsequent comparison of English and Russian participants indicates that the processing of nonspeech inputs is modulated by linguistic experience. Striking, qualitative differences between English and Russian participants suggest that they rely on linguistic principles, both universal and language-particular, rather than generic auditory processing strategies. Thus, the computation of idiosyncratic linguistic outputs is apparently not restricted to speech inputs. This conclusion presents various challenges to both domain-specific and domain-general accounts of cognition.
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