Phonetics Research Group, Department of German Linguistics, University of Marburg, Pilgrimstein 16, 35032 Marburg, Germany; Institute of Psychology, Leipzig University, Germany; Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt, Germany.
Institute of Psychology, Leipzig University, Germany; Institute for Special Education, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany.
Cortex. 2017 Aug;93:28-40. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2017.05.001. Epub 2017 May 19.
Sensory information that unfolds in time, such as in speech perception, relies on efficient chunking mechanisms in order to yield optimally-sized units for further processing. Whether or not two successive acoustic events receive a one-unit or a two-unit interpretation seems to depend on the fit between their temporal extent and a stipulated temporal window of integration. However, there is ongoing debate on how flexible this temporal window of integration should be, especially for the processing of speech sounds. Furthermore, there is no direct evidence of whether attention may modulate the temporal constraints on the integration window. For this reason, we here examine how different word durations, which lead to different temporal separations of sound onsets, interact with attention. In an Electroencephalography (EEG) study, participants actively and passively listened to words where word-final consonants were occasionally omitted. Words had either a natural duration or were artificially prolonged in order to increase the separation of speech sound onsets. Omission responses to incomplete speech input, originating in left temporal cortex, decreased when the critical speech sound was separated from previous sounds by more than 250 msec, i.e., when the separation was larger than the stipulated temporal window of integration (125-150 msec). Attention, on the other hand, only increased omission responses for stimuli with natural durations. We complemented the event-related potential (ERP) analyses by a frequency-domain analysis on the stimulus presentation rate. Notably, the power of stimulation frequency showed the same duration and attention effects than the omission responses. We interpret these findings on the background of existing research on temporal integration windows and further suggest that our findings may be accounted for within the framework of predictive coding.
时间展开的感觉信息，例如在语音感知中，依赖于高效的分组机制，以便为进一步处理生成最佳大小的单元。两个连续的声学事件是否接收一个单元或两个单元的解释似乎取决于它们的时间范围与规定的整合时间窗口之间的匹配程度。然而，关于这个整合时间窗口应该有多灵活，特别是对于语音声音的处理，目前仍存在争议。此外，没有直接的证据表明注意力是否可以调节整合窗口的时间约束。出于这个原因，我们在这里研究不同的单词持续时间如何相互作用，这些持续时间会导致声音起始的不同时间分离。在一项脑电图 (EEG) 研究中，参与者主动和被动地听单词，其中偶尔会省略单词末尾的辅音。单词有自然持续时间或被人为延长，以增加语音声音起始的分离。来自左颞叶皮层的不完整语音输入的省略反应当关键语音与之前的声音相隔超过 250 毫秒时（即分离大于规定的整合时间窗口 125-150 毫秒）时会减少。另一方面，注意力仅增加了具有自然持续时间的刺激的省略反应。我们通过对刺激呈现率进行频域分析补充了事件相关电位 (ERP) 分析。值得注意的是，刺激频率的功率表现出与省略反应相同的持续时间和注意力效应。我们在关于时间整合窗口的现有研究背景下解释这些发现，并进一步表明我们的发现可以在预测编码框架内得到解释。
