Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Cognitive Science, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2013 Jan;87(1):103-10. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2012.11.010. Epub 2012 Nov 29.
The aim of this study was to develop a paradigm for obtaining a multi-feature profile for central auditory processing of different magnitudes of prosodic and phonetic changes in speech sounds. We recorded the MMNs to three vowel identity changes, three magnitudes of changes in intensity, and vowel duration as well as to two magnitudes of pitch changes from semi-synthetic vowels in 34min. Furthermore, we examined how the type and magnitude of deviation affect the size and timing of the MMN. All sound changes elicited statistically significant MMN responses, with the MMN amplitudes increasing with an increase in sound deviance. Importantly, the MMN amplitudes for the vowel changes reflected the differences between the phonemes, as did the MMNs to vowel-duration changes reflect the categorization of these sounds to short and long vowel categories, which are meaningful in the Finnish language. This new multi-feature MMN paradigm is suitable for investigating the central auditory processing of different magnitudes of speech-sound changes and can be used, for instance, in the investigation of pre-attentive phoneme categorization. The paradigm is especially useful for studying speech and language disorders in general, language development, and evolution of phoneme categories early in life, as well as brain plasticity during native or second language learning.
本研究旨在开发一种范式，以获取语音中不同程度韵律和语音变化的中央听觉处理的多特征谱。我们记录了来自半合成元音的三个元音身份变化、三个强度变化幅度以及元音持续时间以及两个音高变化幅度的 MMN。此外，我们研究了偏差的类型和幅度如何影响 MMN 的大小和时间。所有声音变化都引起了统计学上显著的 MMN 反应，随着声音偏差的增加，MMN 幅度也增加。重要的是，元音变化的 MMN 幅度反映了音位之间的差异，就像元音持续时间变化的 MMN 反映了这些声音的分类为短元音和长元音类别一样，这在芬兰语中是有意义的。这种新的多特征 MMN 范式适用于研究不同程度的语音变化的中央听觉处理，可用于研究非注意语音分类等。该范式对于一般的言语和语言障碍、语言发展以及生命早期音位类别进化以及母语或第二语言学习期间的大脑可塑性研究特别有用。
