Politzer-Ahles Stephen, Jap Bernard A J
Department of Linguistics, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, USA.
Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Neurobiol Lang (Camb). 2024 Sep 11;5(4):818-843. doi: 10.1162/nol_a_00147. eCollection 2024.
The mismatch negativity (MMN) is an event-related potential component that reflects pre-attentive change detection in the brain. As an electrophysiological index of processing that responds to differences in incoming consecutive stimuli, the MMN can be elicited through, for example, the presentation of two different categories of sounds in an oddball paradigm where sounds from the "standard" category occur frequently and sounds from the "deviant" category occur rarely. The specificity of what can elicit the MMN is yet to be fully defined. Here we test whether the MMN can be generated by an abstract linguistic contrast with no reliable acoustic cue. Previous studies have shown that the way in which an acoustic cue is used to elicit MMN is influenced by linguistic knowledge, but have not shown that a nonacoustic, abstract linguistic contrast can itself elicit MMN. In this study, we test the strongest interpretation of the claim that the MMN can be generated through a purely linguistic contrast by contrasting tenses in ablauting irregular English verbs (where there is no reliable acoustic cue for tense). We find that this contrast elicits a negativity, as do other linguistic contrasts previously shown to elicit MMN (a contrast between phonologically voiced and phonologically voiceless segments and a purely acoustic contrast between aspirated and unaspirated segments). The findings provide evidence that the MMN is indeed sensitive to purely abstract linguistic categories.
失匹配负波（MMN）是一种事件相关电位成分，反映大脑中前注意阶段的变化检测。作为一种对传入的连续刺激差异做出反应的加工过程的电生理指标，MMN可以通过例如在oddball范式中呈现两种不同类别的声音来诱发，其中来自“标准”类别的声音频繁出现，而来自“偏差”类别的声音很少出现。能够诱发MMN的刺激的特异性尚未完全明确。在这里，我们测试MMN是否可以由没有可靠声学线索的抽象语言对比诱发。先前的研究表明，用于诱发MMN的声学线索的方式受到语言知识的影响，但尚未表明非声学的抽象语言对比本身可以诱发MMN。在本研究中，我们通过对比英语不规则动词元音交替中的时态（其中没有可靠的时态声学线索），来测试关于MMN可以通过纯语言对比产生这一说法的最有力解释。我们发现这种对比会诱发一个负波，之前已表明能诱发MMN的其他语言对比（语音浊音和清音段之间的对比以及送气音和不送气音段之间的纯声学对比）也会诱发负波。这些发现提供了证据，表明MMN确实对纯抽象语言类别敏感。
