Centre for Cognition and Decision Making, Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation.
Department of Psychology, Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.
Sci Rep. 2022 Jul 30;12(1):13114. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-14478-2.
During verbal communication, interlocutors rely on both linguistic (e.g., words, syntax) and extralinguistic (e.g., voice quality) information. The neural mechanisms of extralinguistic information processing are particularly poorly understood. To address this, we used EEG and recorded event-related brain potentials while participants listened to Russian pronoun-verb phrases presented in either male or female voice. Crucially, we manipulated congruency between the grammatical gender signaled by the verbs' ending and the speakers' apparent gender. To focus on putative automatic integration of extralinguistic information into syntactic processing and avoid confounds arising from secondary top-down processes, we used passive non-attend auditory presentation with visual distraction and no stimulus-related task. Most expressed neural responses were found at both early (150 ms, ELAN-like) and late (400 ms, N400-like) phrase processing stages. Crucially, both of these brain responses exhibited sensitivity to extralinguistic information and were significantly enhanced for phrases whose voice and grammatical gender were incongruent, similar to what is known for ERPs effects related to overt grammatical violations. Our data suggest a high degree of automaticity in processing extralinguistic information during spoken language comprehension which indicates existence of a rapid automatic syntactic integration mechanism sensitive to both linguistic and extralinguistic information.
在口头交流中，对话者依赖语言（例如，单词、语法）和非语言（例如，音质）信息。非语言信息处理的神经机制尤其知之甚少。为了解决这个问题，我们使用 EEG 记录了参与者在男性或女性声音中听到俄语代词动词短语时的事件相关脑电位。至关重要的是，我们操纵了动词结尾所表示的语法性别与说话者明显性别的一致性。为了专注于将非语言信息自动整合到句法处理中，并避免由于次要自上而下的过程而产生的混淆，我们使用被动非听觉呈现，同时进行视觉分散且没有与刺激相关的任务。大多数表达的神经反应都出现在短语处理的早期（150ms，ELAN 样）和晚期（400ms，N400 样）阶段。至关重要的是，这两种脑反应都对非语言信息敏感，并且对于语音和语法性别不一致的短语，它们的反应明显增强，这与与显性语法违规相关的 ERP 效应相似。我们的数据表明，在口语理解过程中，处理非语言信息具有高度的自动性，这表明存在一种快速自动的句法整合机制，对语言和非语言信息都敏感。
