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Behavioral and Neurodynamic Effects of Word Learning on Phonotactic Repair
David W Gow1,2,3,4, Adriana Schoenhaut1, Enes Avcu1
1Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States.
Frontiers in Psychology
|March 29, 2021
Summary
Learning new words influences how we perceive speech sounds. The study shows that learning words violating English phonotactic rules changes perception, demonstrating lexical influence on speech sound processing.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Neuroscience
- Computational Linguistics
Background:
- Phonotactic constraints shape spoken word perception and production.
- Two theories exist: generative (rule-based) and emergentist (lexicon-based).
- The role of lexical mediation in phonotactic constraint perception is debated.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the extent to which phonotactic constraints are lexically mediated.
- To determine if learning words violating phonotactic rules affects perceptual repair mechanisms.
Main Methods:
- Participants learned novel words violating English phonotactic constraints.
- Perceptual repair of nonword consonant-consonant-vowel (CCV) stimuli was assessed.
- Magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) data were analyzed with effective connectivity.
Main Results:
- Learning words with illegal onset clusters reduced perceptual repair of similar nonword stimuli.
- Behavioral changes correlated with altered effective connectivity between lexical and acoustic-phonetic brain areas.
- This suggests top-down lexical influences on speech perception.
Conclusions:
- Phonotactic constraints on speech perception are significantly mediated by lexical knowledge.
- Learning new words can dynamically alter phonotactic perception.
- Findings support emergentist accounts of phonotactic constraint development.
Keywords:
effective connectivityemergencemagnetoencephalographyphonologyphonotacticrulespeech perceptionword learningMore Related Videos
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