Zheng Hong-Ying, Peng Gang, Chen Jian-Yong, Zhang Caicai, Minett James W, Wang William S-Y
School of Software Engineering, Shenzhen Institute of Information Technology, Shenzhen 518172, China ; Department of Electronic Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong.
CUHK-PKU-UST Joint Research Centre for Language and Human Complexity, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong ; Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong ; Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen 518055, China.
Comput Math Methods Med. 2014;2014:961563. doi: 10.1155/2014/961563. Epub 2014 Aug 28.
This study investigates the effect of tone inventories on brain activities underlying pitch without focal attention. We find that the electrophysiological responses to across-category stimuli are larger than those to within-category stimuli when the pitch contours are superimposed on nonspeech stimuli; however, there is no electrophysiological response difference associated with category status in speech stimuli. Moreover, this category effect in nonspeech stimuli is stronger for Cantonese speakers. Results of previous and present studies lead us to conclude that brain activities to the same native lexical tone contrasts are modulated by speakers' language experiences not only in active phonological processing but also in automatic feature detection without focal attention. In contrast to the condition with focal attention, where phonological processing is stronger for speech stimuli, the feature detection (pitch contours in this study) without focal attention as shaped by language background is superior in relatively regular stimuli, that is, the nonspeech stimuli. The results suggest that Cantonese listeners outperform Mandarin listeners in automatic detection of pitch features because of the denser Cantonese tone system.
本研究调查了声调库存对无集中注意力情况下音高背后大脑活动的影响。我们发现，当音高轮廓叠加在非语音刺激上时，对跨类别刺激的电生理反应大于对类别内刺激的反应；然而，在语音刺激中，不存在与类别状态相关的电生理反应差异。此外，粤语使用者在非语音刺激中的这种类别效应更强。先前和当前研究的结果使我们得出结论，大脑对相同母语词汇声调对比的活动不仅在主动语音处理中，而且在无集中注意力的自动特征检测中，都受到说话者语言经验的调节。与集中注意力的情况相反，在集中注意力时语音刺激的语音处理更强，而由语言背景塑造的无集中注意力的特征检测（本研究中的音高轮廓）在相对规则的刺激即非语音刺激中更具优势。结果表明，由于粤语声调系统更密集，粤语听众在音高特征的自动检测方面优于普通话听众。
