Batista Ana Rita, Catronas Dinis, Folia Vasiliki, Silva Susana
Center for Psychology at University of Porto, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Psychology Department, University of Porto, Rua Alfredo Allen, s/n, 4200-135 Porto, Portugal.
Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University Campus, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece.
Brain Sci. 2023 Mar 4;13(3):441. doi: 10.3390/brainsci13030441.
Prosodic phrasing is the segmentation of utterances into prosodic words, phonological phrases (smaller units) and intonational phrases (larger units) based on acoustic cues-pauses, pitch changes and pre-boundary lengthening. The perception of prosodic boundaries is characterized by a positive event-related potential (ERP) component, temporally aligned with phrase boundaries-the Closure Positive Shift (CPS). The role of pre-boundary lengthening in boundary perception is still a matter of debate: while studies on phonological phrase boundaries indicate that all three cues contribute equally, approaches to intonational phrase boundaries highlight the pause as the most powerful cue. Moreover, all studies used explicit boundary recognition tasks, and it is unknown how pre-boundary lengthening works in implicit prosodic processing tasks, characteristic of real-life contexts. In this study, we examined the effects of pre-boundary lengthening (original, short, and long) on the EEG responses to intonational phrase boundaries (CPS effect) in European Portuguese, using an implicit task. Both original and short versions showed equivalent CPS effects, while the long set did not elicit the effect. This suggests that pre-boundary lengthening does not contribute to improved perception of boundaries in intonational phrases (longer units), possibly due to memory and attention-related constraints.
韵律短语划分是指根据声学线索——停顿、音高变化和边界前延长，将话语分割为韵律词、音系短语（较小单位）和语调短语（较大单位）。韵律边界的感知以一种与事件相关的正电位（ERP）成分（即闭合正移（CPS））为特征，其时间与短语边界对齐。边界前延长在边界感知中的作用仍存在争议：虽然关于音系短语边界的研究表明，这三种线索的作用相同，但关于语调短语边界的研究则强调停顿是最有力的线索。此外，所有研究都使用了明确的边界识别任务，而边界前延长在现实生活中典型的隐性韵律处理任务中如何起作用尚不清楚。在本研究中，我们使用一项隐性任务，研究了边界前延长（原始、短和长）对欧洲葡萄牙语中语调短语边界（CPS效应）的脑电图反应的影响。原始版本和短版本都显示出等效的CPS效应，而长版本则未引发该效应。这表明，边界前延长可能由于与记忆和注意力相关的限制，对语调短语（较大单位）边界的感知改善没有贡献。
