National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2011 Nov;23(11):3241-53. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2011.21623. Epub 2011 Jan 31.
It is still unknown whether sonic environments influence the processing of individual sounds in a similar way as discourse or sentence context influences the processing of individual words. One obstacle to answering this question has been the failure to dissociate perceptual (i.e., how similar are sonic environment and target sound?) and conceptual (i.e., how related are sonic environment and target?) priming effects. In this study, we dissociate these effects by creating prime-target pairs with a purely perceptual or both a perceptual and conceptual relationship. Perceptual prime-target pairs were derived from perceptual-conceptual pairs (i.e., meaningful environmental sounds) by shuffling the spectral composition of primes and targets so as to preserve their perceptual relationship while making them unrecognizable. Hearing both original and shuffled targets elicited a more positive N1/P2 complex in the ERP when targets were related to a preceding prime as compared with unrelated. Only related original targets reduced the N400 amplitude. Related shuffled targets tended to decrease the amplitude of a late temporo-parietal positivity. Taken together, these effects indicate that sonic environments influence first the perceptual and then the conceptual processing of individual sounds. Moreover, the influence on conceptual processing is comparable to the influence linguistic context has on the processing of individual words.
目前尚不清楚声音环境是否以与话语或句子语境影响单个单词处理相同的方式影响单个声音的处理。回答这个问题的一个障碍是未能区分感知（即声音环境和目标声音有多相似？）和概念（即声音环境和目标有多相关？）启动效应。在这项研究中，我们通过创建具有纯粹感知或感知和概念关系的启动-目标对来区分这些效应。感知启动-目标对是通过打乱启动和目标的光谱组成从感知-概念对（即有意义的环境声音）中派生出来的，从而在保持它们的感知关系的同时使它们无法识别。与不相关的相比，当目标与前面的启动相关时，听到原始和打乱的目标都会在 ERP 中引起更积极的 N1/P2 复合波。只有相关的原始目标会降低 N400 波幅。相关的打乱目标往往会降低颞顶区正波的幅度。综上所述，这些效应表明声音环境首先影响单个声音的感知处理，然后影响概念处理。此外，对概念处理的影响与语言语境对单个单词处理的影响相当。
