School of Humanities, Tsinghua University, 100083 Beijing, China.
J Integr Neurosci. 2024 Jul 25;23(7):139. doi: 10.31083/j.jin2307139.
Segments and tone are important sub-syllabic units that play large roles in lexical processing in tonal languages. However, their roles in lexical processing remain unclear, and the event-related potential (ERP) technique will benefit the exploration of the cognitive mechanism in lexical processing.
The high temporal resolution of ERP enables the technique to interpret rapidly changing spoken language performances. The present ERP study examined the different roles of segments and tone in Mandarin Chinese lexical processing. An auditory priming experiment was designed that included five types of priming stimuli: consonant mismatch, vowel mismatch, tone mismatch, unrelated mismatch, and identity. Participants were asked to judge whether the target of the prime-target pair was a real Mandarin disyllabic word or not.
Behavioral results including reaction time and response accuracy and ERP results were collected. Results were different from those of previous studies that showed the dominant role of consonants in lexical access in mainly non-tonal languages like English. Our results showed that consonants and vowels play comparable roles, whereas tone plays a less important role than do consonants and vowels in lexical processing in Mandarin.
These results have implications for understanding the brain mechanisms in lexical processing of tonal languages.
在声调语言中，音节和声调是重要的亚音节单位，在词汇加工中起着重要作用。然而，它们在词汇加工中的作用仍不清楚，事件相关电位（ERP）技术将有助于探索词汇加工中的认知机制。
ERP 的高时间分辨率使该技术能够解释快速变化的口语表现。本 ERP 研究探讨了音节和声调在汉语词汇加工中的不同作用。设计了一个听觉启动实验，包括五种启动刺激：辅音不匹配、元音不匹配、声调不匹配、不相关不匹配和相同。要求参与者判断启动-目标对的目标是否为真实的汉语双音节词。
收集了行为结果，包括反应时间和反应准确率以及 ERP 结果。结果与之前的研究不同，之前的研究表明，在主要是非声调语言（如英语）中，辅音在词汇获取中起主导作用。我们的结果表明，在汉语词汇加工中，辅音和元音起着相当的作用，而声调的作用不如辅音和元音重要。
这些结果对于理解声调语言词汇加工的大脑机制具有启示意义。
