Electrophysiological correlates of categorical phoneme perception in adults.
Event-related potentials, recorded through a 128-electrode net, were used to study phonemic processing in the human auditory system. Within a stream of identical syllables, acoustic deviants were introduced that either crossed a phonetic boundary or remained within the same category. Two phonetic boundaries were explored, one present and the other absent in the subjects' native language. A large mismatch negativity was induced by native phonetic deviants, but not by non-native or within-category deviants. We suggest that a language-specific phonemic code has a separate neural representation in sensory memory and can serve as the basis for auditory mismatch detection. The subjects' inability to discriminate non-native phonetic contrasts does not seem related to a late attentional filter, but rather to a genuine loss of auditory discrimination abilities.
Dehaene-Lambertz
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Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, Paris, France.
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention; D001307:Auditory Perception; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004594:Electrophysiology / Q000379:methods; D004739:England; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D007802:Language; D010700:Phonetics