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Timecourse of bottom-up and top-down language processing during a picture-based semantic priming task.
McCall E Sarrett1, Bob McMurray2
1Department of Psychology, Gonzaga University.
Language, Cognition and Neuroscience
|May 1, 2025
Summary
This study simultaneously tracked multiple stages of spoken language processing using EEG and a priming task. Findings reveal the temporal interplay between perceptual, semantic, and feedback mechanisms in real-time language comprehension.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psycholinguistics
- Speech Processing
Background:
- Spoken language understanding involves multi-level analysis, with information flowing between acoustic, phonetic, lexical, and semantic levels.
- Previous research often isolated single processing stages, limiting understanding of their temporal relationships.
- The dynamic interplay between bottom-up and top-down processing in real-time language comprehension remains incompletely understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To simultaneously characterize multiple stages of linguistic processing as they unfold in time.
- To investigate the temporal dynamics of perceptual gradiency, semantic integration, and top-down feedback during spoken word recognition.
- To provide a more comprehensive understanding of the temporal relationships between different levels of language processing.
Main Methods:
- Utilized electroencephalography (EEG) to record brain activity from 30 listeners.
- Employed a priming task where a picture prime (e.g., 'peach') biased expectations for a target word from a minimal pair (e.g., 'beach'/'peach').
- Analyzed EEG data to examine the time course of perceptual, semantic, and feedback processes.
Main Results:
- Demonstrated the simultaneous unfolding of perceptual, semantic, and feedback processes during spoken language comprehension.
- Provided temporal insights into how acoustic-phonetic information interacts with lexical and semantic information.
- Revealed the time course of top-down influences on early-stage speech processing.
Conclusions:
- Simultaneous measurement of multiple processing stages offers a more complete picture of real-time language comprehension than isolated analyses.
- The temporal dynamics revealed shed light on the intricate coordination of different linguistic levels.
- Findings contribute to understanding the neural basis of spoken language processing and inform models of speech perception.
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