title: Electrophysiological evidence for modulation of lexical processing after repetitive exposure to foreign phonotactic rules.
abstract: In two experiments we investigate how repeated exposure to native and non-native phonotactic regularities alters the N400, an event-related potential related to lexico-semantic access. Participants underwent a Passive Listening (Experiment 1) or a Categorization Training (Experiment 2) for monosyllabic pseudowords over 3 days. During Passive Listening participants solely listened to the stimuli while for Categorization Training they learned to assign items to two arbitrary categories by feedback. Notably, this task did not rely on phonotactic regularities. Before training, N400 was larger for legal compared to illegal items. Over the 3-day exposure Passive Listening yielded a significant decrease in N400-amplitude for illegal pseudowords, however, this effect was abolished and partially inverted by the Categorization Training. We suggest the decrease in N400-amplitude indicates more efficient discrimination between native and non-native pseudowords since only the former are potential lexical candidates. On the contrary, Categorization Training introduces a 'protosemantic' context overriding prelexical selection processes.
authors.affiliation: Clinic for Cognitive Neurology, University-Hospital Leipzig, Medical Faculty, University of Leipzig, Liebigstr. 18, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany; Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Neurology, Stephanstr. 1A, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany. Electronic address: rossi@cbs.mpg.de.
authors.forename: Sonja
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rossi
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hartmüller
authors.forename: Micol
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vignotto
authors.forename: Hellmuth
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Obrig
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D012660:Semantics; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Categorization; Language learning; Lexical processing; N400; Passive listening; Phonotactics