Mueller Jutta L, Oberecker Regine, Friederici Angela D
Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science, Stephanstr, 1a, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
BMC Neurosci. 2009 Jul 29;10:89. doi: 10.1186/1471-2202-10-89.
Artificial language studies have revealed the remarkable ability of humans to extract syntactic structures from a continuous sound stream by mere exposure. However, it remains unclear whether the processes acquired in such tasks are comparable to those applied during normal language processing. The present study compares the ERPs to auditory processing of simple Italian sentences in native and non-native speakers after brief exposure to Italian sentences of a similar structure. The sentences contained a non-adjacent dependency between an auxiliary and the morphologically marked suffix of the verb. Participants were presented four alternating learning and testing phases. During learning phases only correct sentences were presented while during testing phases 50 percent of the sentences contained a grammatical violation.
The non-native speakers successfully learned the dependency and displayed an N400-like negativity and a subsequent anteriorily distributed positivity in response to rule violations. The native Italian group showed an N400 followed by a P600 effect.
The presence of the P600 suggests that native speakers applied a grammatical rule. In contrast, non-native speakers appeared to use a lexical form-based processing strategy. Thus, the processing mechanisms acquired in the language learning task were only partly comparable to those applied by competent native speakers.
人工语言研究揭示了人类仅通过接触就能从连续的声音流中提取句法结构的非凡能力。然而，在此类任务中获得的过程是否与正常语言处理过程中所应用的过程相当仍不清楚。本研究比较了母语者和非母语者在短暂接触结构相似的意大利语句后，对简单意大利语句进行听觉处理时的事件相关电位（ERP）。这些句子在助动词和动词的形态标记后缀之间存在非相邻依存关系。参与者经历了四个交替的学习和测试阶段。在学习阶段，只呈现正确的句子，而在测试阶段，50%的句子包含语法错误。
非母语者成功学会了这种依存关系，并在对规则违反做出反应时表现出类似N400的负波和随后的前部正波。以意大利语为母语的组表现出N400，随后是P600效应。
P600的出现表明母语者应用了语法规则。相比之下，非母语者似乎使用了基于词汇形式的处理策略。因此，在语言学习任务中获得的处理机制仅部分与熟练的母语者所应用的机制相当。
