Contrastive intonation effects on word recall for information-structural alternatives across the sexes.

Focus highlights the fact that contextual alternatives are relevant for the interpretation of an utterance. For example, if someone says: "The meeting is on TUESDAY," with focus marked by a pitch accent on "Tuesday," the speaker might want to correct the assumption that the meeting is on Monday (an alternative date). Intonation as one way to signal focus was manipulated in a delayed-recall paradigm. Recall of contextual alternatives was tested in a condition where a set of alternatives was evoked by contrastive intonation. A control condition used intonation contours reported for broad focus in German. It was hypothesized that contrastive intonation improves recall, just as focus-sensitive particles (e.g., 'only') do, compared to sentences without such particles. Participants listened to short texts introducing a list of three elements from taxonomic categories. One of the three elements was re-mentioned in a subsequent critical sentence, realized with either a broad (H+!H*) or with a contrastive intonation contour (L+H*). Cued recall of the list elements was tested block-wise. Results show that contrastive intonation enhances recall for focus alternatives. In addition, it was found that the observed recall benefit is predominantly driven by females. The results support the assumption that contextual alternatives are better encoded in memory irrespective of whether focus is expressed prosodically or by a focus-sensitive particle. The results further show that females are more sensitive to pragmatic information conveyed through prosody than males.

Activation Patterns throughout the Word Processing Network of L1-dominant Bilinguals Reflect Language Similarity and Language Decisions.

A crucial aspect of bilingual communication is the ability to identify the language of an input. Yet, the neural and cognitive basis of this ability is largely unknown. Moreover, it cannot be easily incorporated into neuronal models of bilingualism, which posit that bilinguals rely on the same neural substrates for both languages and concurrently activate them even in monolingual settings. Here we hypothesized that bilinguals can employ language-specific sublexical (bigram frequency) and lexical (orthographic neighborhood size) statistics for language recognition. Moreover, we investigated the neural networks representing language-specific statistics and hypothesized that language identity is encoded in distributed activation patterns within these networks. To this end, German-English bilinguals made speeded language decisions on visually presented pseudowords during fMRI. Language attribution followed lexical neighborhood sizes both in first (L1) and second (L2) language. RTs revealed an overall tuning to L1 bigram statistics. Neuroimaging results demonstrated tuning to L1 statistics at sublexical (occipital lobe) and phonological (temporoparietal lobe) levels, whereas neural activation in the angular gyri reflected sensitivity to lexical similarity to both languages. Analysis of distributed activation patterns reflected language attribution as early as in the ventral stream of visual processing. We conclude that in language-ambiguous contexts visual word processing is dominated by L1 statistical structure at sublexical orthographic and phonological levels, whereas lexical search is determined by the structure of both languages. Moreover, our results demonstrate that language identity modulates distributed activation patterns throughout the reading network, providing a key to language identity representations within this shared network.

The neurocognitive signature of focus alternatives.

Focus alternatives are words/phrases that can substitute for the focused constituent of an utterance. In "Carsten has picked [CHERRIES]F from the tree.", (marked by pitch focus on cherries), the speaker wants to not only convey the fact that Carsten has picked cherries, but also to contrast cherries with other fruit that could have been picked, such as plums. Although focus alternatives are key to understanding the implicit aspects of an utterance, nothing is known about their neural representation. We directly contrasted neural representations of lexico-semantic similarity and focus alternative status using fMRI. Semantic relatedness was reflected in decreased activation in the bilateral superior temporal gyri. By contrast, processing of focus alternatives induced increased activations in the precuneus and the fronto-median wall, two regions previously implicated in discourse processing. These results suggest that focus alternative status is processed separately from semantic relatedness, at the level of discourse integration.

Listening to Puns Elicits the Co-Activation of Alternative Homophone Meanings during Language Production.

Recent evidence suggests that lexical-semantic activation spread during language production can be dynamically shaped by contextual factors. In this study we investigated whether semantic processing modes can also affect lexical-semantic activation during word production. Specifically, we tested whether the processing of linguistic ambiguities, presented in the form of puns, has an influence on the co-activation of unrelated meanings of homophones in a subsequent language production task. In a picture-word interference paradigm with word distractors that were semantically related or unrelated to the non-depicted meanings of homophones we found facilitation induced by related words only when participants listened to puns before object naming, but not when they heard jokes with unambiguous linguistic stimuli. This finding suggests that a semantic processing mode of ambiguity perception can induce the co-activation of alternative homophone meanings during speech planning.

Context updating during sentence comprehension: the effect of aboutness topic.

To communicate efficiently, speakers typically link their utterances to the discourse environment and adapt their utterances to the listener's discourse representation. Information structure describes how linguistic information is packaged within a discourse to optimize information transfer. The present study investigates the nature and time course of context integration (i.e., aboutness topic vs. neutral context) on the comprehension of German declarative sentences with either subject-before-object (SO) or object-before-subject (OS) word order using offline comprehensibility judgments and online event-related potentials (ERPs). Comprehensibility judgments revealed that the topic context selectively facilitated comprehension of stories containing OS (i.e., non-canonical) sentences. In the ERPs, the topic context effect was reflected in a less pronounced late positivity at the sentence-initial object. In line with the Syntax-Discourse Model, we argue that these context-induced effects are attributable to reduced processing costs for updating the current discourse model. The results support recent approaches of neurocognitive models of discourse processing.

Processing different kinds of semantic relations in picture-word interference with non-masked and masked distractors.

Spoken production requires lexical selection, guided by the conceptual representation of the to-be-named target. Currently, the question whether lexical selection is subject to competition is hotly debated. In the picture-word interference task, manipulating the visibility of written distractor words provides important insights: clearly visible categorically related distractors cause interference whereas masked distractors induce facilitation (Finkbeiner and Caramazza, 2006). Now you see it, now you don't: On turning semantic interference into facilitation in a Stoop-like task. We explored the effect of distractor masking in more depth by investigating its interplay with different types of semantic overlap. Specifically, we contrasted categorical with associatively based relatedness. For the former, we replicated the polarity reversal in semantic effects dependent on whether distractors were masked or not. Post-experimental visibility tests showed that weak semantic facilitation with masked distractors did not depend on individual variability in participants' ability to perceive the distractors. Associatively related distractors showed facilitation with non-masked presentation, but little effect when masked. Overall, the results suggest that it is primarily distractor activation strength which determines whether semantic effects are facilitatory or interfering in PWI tasks.

Speaking two languages at once: unconscious native word form access in second language production.

Bilingualism research has established language non-selective lexical access in comprehension. However, the evidence for such an effect in production remains sparse and its neural time-course has not yet been investigated. We demonstrate that German-English bilinguals performing a simple picture-naming task exclusively in English spontaneously access the phonological form of -unproduced- German words. Participants were asked to produce English adjective-noun sequences describing the colour and identity of familiar objects presented as line drawings. We associated adjective and picture names such that their onsets phonologically overlapped in English (e.g., green goat), in German through translation (e.g., blue flower - 'blaue Blume'), or in neither language. As expected, phonological priming in English modulated event-related brain potentials over the frontocentral scalp region from around 440ms after picture onset. Phonological priming in German was detectable even earlier, from 300ms, even though German was never produced and in the absence of an interaction between language and phonological repetition priming at any point in time. Overall, these results establish the existence of non-selective access to phonological representations of the two languages in the domain of speech production.

A purple giraffe is faster than a purple elephant: inconsistent phonology affects determiner selection in English.

The form of a determiner is dependent on different contextual factors: in some languages grammatical number and grammatical gender determine the choice of a determiner variant. In other languages, the phonological onset of the element immediately following the determiner affects selection, too. Previous work has shown that the activation of opposing determiner forms by a noun's grammatical properties leads to slower naming latencies in a picture naming task, as does the activation of opposing forms by the interaction between a noun's gender and the phonological context. The present paper addresses the question of whether phonological context alone is sufficient to evoke competition between determiner forms. Participants produced English phrases in which a noun phrase's phonology required a determiner that was the same as or differed from the determiner required by the noun itself (e.g., apurple giraffe; an orange giraffe). Naming latencies were slower when the phrase-initial determiner differed from the determiner required by the noun in isolation than when the phrase-initial determiner matched the isolated-noun determiner. This was true both for definite and indefinite determiners. The data show that during the production of a determiner-noun phrase, nouns automatically activate the phonological forms of their determiners, which can compete with the phonological forms that are generated by an assimilation rule.

Does word length affect speech onset latencies when producing single words?

Most models of spoken production predict that shorter utterances should be initiated faster than longer ones. However, whether word-length effects in single word production exist is at present controversial. A series of experiments did not find evidence for such an effect. First, an experimental manipulation of word length in picture naming showed no latency differences. Second, Dutch and English speakers named 2 sets of either objects or words (monosyllabic names in Dutch and disyllabic names in English or vice versa). A length effect, which should manifest itself as an interaction between object set and response language, emerged in word naming but not in picture naming. Third, distractors consisting of the final syllable of disyllabic object names speeded up responses, but at the same time, no word-length effect was found. These results suggest that before the response is initiated, an entire word has been phonologically encoded, but only its initial syllable is placed in an articulatory buffer.

Task-dependent semantic interference in language production: an fMRI study.

We used fMRI to investigate competition during language production in two word production tasks: object naming and color naming of achromatic line drawings. Generally, fMRI activation was higher for color naming. The line drawings were followed by a word (the distractor word) that referred to either the object, a related object, or an unrelated object. The effect of the distractor word on the BOLD response was qualitatively different for the two tasks. The activation pattern suggests two different kinds of competition during lexical retrieval: (1) Task-relevant responses (e.g., red in color naming) compete with task-irrelevant responses (i.e., the object's name). This competition effect was dominant in prefrontal cortex. (2) Multiple task-relevant responses (i.e., target word and distractor word) compete for selection. This competition effect was dominant in ventral temporal cortex. This study provides further evidence for the distinct roles of frontal and temporal cortex in language production, while highlighting the effects of competition, albeit from different sources, in both regions.

Phonological regularities and grammatical gender retrieval in spoken word recognition and word production.

Two experiments investigate whether native speakers of French can use a noun's phonological ending to retrieve its gender and that of a gender-marked element. In Experiment 1, participants performed a gender decision task on the noun's gender-marked determiner for auditorily presented nouns. Noun endings with high predictive values were selected. The noun stimuli could either belong to the gender class predicted by their ending (congruent) or they could belong to the gender class that was different from the predicted gender (incongruent). Gender decisions were made significantly faster for congruent nouns than for incongruent nouns, relative to a (lexical decision) baseline task. In Experiment 2, participants named pictures of the same materials as used in Experiment 1 with noun phrases consisting of a gender-marked determiner, a gender-marked adjective and a noun. In this Experiment, no effect of congruency, relative to a (bare noun naming) baseline task, was observed. Thus, the results show an effect of phonological information on the retrieval of gender-marked elements in spoken word recognition, but not in word production.