Rapid integration of speaker accent during morphosyntactic processing.

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Neuroscience
• Linguistics

Background:

• Listeners integrate multiple information sources during spoken language processing.
• Speaker accent influences on-line language processing, including morphosyntax.
• Mandarin-accented English exhibits specific error patterns (e.g., omission errors).

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate neural responses to subject-verb agreement errors in native versus Mandarin-accented English.
• To examine how different error types (omission vs. commission) are processed neurally.
• To understand the influence of speaker accent on morphosyntactic processing.

Main Methods:

• Electroencephalography (EEG) was used to record listeners' neural responses.
• Listeners processed sentences with subject-verb agreement errors in native and foreign-accented speech.
• Analysis focused on event-related potentials (ERPs) such as N400 and P600.

Main Results:

• Errors of omission elicited a P600 in native speech but no significant response in foreign-accented speech.
• Errors of commission elicited an N400 in native speech and a sustained negativity in foreign-accented speech.
• Neural responses differed based on error type and speaker accent, indicating sensitivity to error typicality and perceptual salience.

Conclusions:

• Speaker accent significantly influences the neural processing of morphosyntactic agreement errors.
• Listeners' neural responses reflect sensitivity to both the type of error and the speaker's accent.
• Factors beyond error typicality, such as perceptual salience, may modulate neural responses to linguistic violations.