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Updated: Dec 31, 2025
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Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology
Published on: June 29, 2021
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Orofacial somatosensory inputs modulate word segmentation in lexical decision
Rintaro Ogane1, Jean-Luc Schwartz1, Takayuki Ito2
1Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP, GIPSA-lab, 38000 Grenoble, France.
Cognition
|January 1, 2020
Summary
Facial touch (somatosensory stimulation) influences how we segment words and make lexical decisions. This suggests our sense of touch plays a role in understanding spoken language, particularly when distinguishing words.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Neuroscience
- Speech Perception
Background:
- Articulatory/motor knowledge is increasingly recognized for its role in phonetic processing.
- Orofacial somatosensory inputs have been shown to influence phoneme categorization.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if somatosensory inputs contribute to higher-level speech perception, specifically word segmentation and lexical decision.
- To determine the role of orofacial somatosensory system in lexical perception.
Main Methods:
- An auditory identification test was conducted using French phrases with ambiguous segmentation.
- Somatosensory stimulation was applied to facial skin during acoustic utterances.
- Lexical decisions were recorded to assess word segmentation bias.
Main Results:
- Lexical decisions were significantly biased by the timing of facial somatosensory stimulation.
- This bias was specific to orofacial stimulation, not occurring with stimulation elsewhere on the skin.
- Results indicate a contribution of somatosensory input to lexical perception.
Conclusions:
- The orofacial somatosensory system plays a role in lexical perception, especially in disambiguating speech based on articulatory movements.
- Articulatory/motor knowledge may be involved in the process of speech segmentation.
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