HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Eulitz, C. Articles by Lahiri, A. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Eulitz, C. Articles by Lahiri, A.

Neurobiological Evidence for Abstract Phonological Representations in the Mental Lexicon during Speech Recognition

University of Konstanz

A central issue in speech recognition is how contrastive phonemic information is stored in the mental lexicon. The conventional view assumes that this information is closely related to acoustic properties of speech. Considering that no word is ever pronounced alike twice and that the brain has limited capacities to manage information, an opposing view proposes abstract underspecified representations where not all phonemic features are stored. We examined this proposal using event-related brain potentials, in particular mismatch negativity (MMN), an automatic change detection response in the brain that is sensitive to language-specific phoneme representations. In the current study, vowel pairs were presented to subjects, reversed as standard and deviant. Models not assuming underspecification predict equal MMNs for vowel pairs regardless of the reversal. In contrast, enhanced and earlier MMNs were observed for those conditions where the standard is not phonologically underspecified in the mental representation. This provides the first neurobiological evidence for a featurally underspecified mental lexicon.

Key Words: Electroencephalography • event-related potentials • mismatch negativity • MMN • language processing • mental lexicon • speech processing • phonological features

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. Obleser, S. K. Scott, and C. Eulitz Now You Hear It, Now You Don't: Transient Traces of Consonants and their Nonspeech Analogues in the Human Brain Cereb Cortex, August 1, 2006; 16(8): 1069 - 1076. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				N. Kazanina, C. Phillips, and W. Idsardi The influence of meaning on the perception of speech sounds PNAS, July 25, 2006; 103(30): 11381 - 11386. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]