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Automatic auditory word perception as measured by 40 Hz EEG responses
C M Krause1, P Korpilahti, B Pörn
1Department of Psychology, Abo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
Objectives:
Here we report the existence of automatic speech perception in man, revealed by 40 Hz EEG responses.
Methods:
We presented to Finnish subjects the Finnish word /tu:li/(wind) as the standard stimulus and another Finnish word /tuli/(fire) as the deviant stimulus using a passive auditory oddball task. The experiment was also conducted with pseudowords as stimuli.
Results:
We observed a global significant increase in 40 Hz EEG power at 600 ms after stimulus onset for words, but not for pseudowords.
Conclusions:
Our results indicate that the memory representation of the standard verbal stimuli, even if unattended, might not merely be based on the physical features of the stimuli: if a semantic representation exists, then the brain processes it pre-attentively.