ERP correlates of pre-attentive processing of Cantonese lexical tones: The effects of pitch contour and pitch height.
The pre-attentive processing of Cantonese tones was studied with an auditory passive oddball paradigm. Event-related potentials to standard and deviant auditory stimuli were recorded as participants watched a silent movie attentively. The standards and deviants differed in either pitch level or pitch contour. Mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a were elicited by all types of deviant tones, suggesting that lexical tone was processed pre-attentively. In addition, the size and latency of MMN were sensitive to the size of pitch level change, while the latency of P3a captured the presence of pitch contour change. These results indicate that pitch contour and pitch height are two important dimensions in sensory processing of lexical tones.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR, China.
Yiu-Kei
YK
Tsang
Shiwei
S
Jia
Jian
J
Huang
Hsuan-Chih
HC
Chen
D000293:Adolescent; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004569:Electroencephalography; D018913:Event-Related Potentials, P300 / Q000502:physiology*; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D010898:Pitch Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult