@article{NixonvanRijMoketal.2016, author = {Nixon, Jessie S. and van Rij, Jacolien and Mok, Peggy and Baayen, Harald R. and Chen, Yiya}, title = {The temporal dynamics of perceptual uncertainty: eye movement evidence from Cantonese segment and tone perception}, series = {Journal of memory and language}, volume = {90}, journal = {Journal of memory and language}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {San Diego}, issn = {0749-596X}, doi = {10.1016/j.jml.2016.03.005}, pages = {103 -- 125}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Two visual world eyetracking experiments investigated how acoustic cue value and statistical variance affect perceptual uncertainty during Cantonese consonant (Experiment 1) and tone perception (Experiment 2). Participants heard low- or high-variance acoustic stimuli. Euclidean distance of fixations from target and competitor pictures over time was analysed using Generalised Additive Mixed Modelling. Distance of fixations from target and competitor pictures varied as a function of acoustic cue, providing evidence for gradient, nonlinear sensitivity to cue values. Moreover, cue value effects significantly interacted with statistical variance, indicating that the cue distribution directly affects perceptual uncertainty. Interestingly, the time course of effects differed between target distance and competitor distance models. The pattern of effects over time suggests a global strategy in response to the level of uncertainty: as uncertainty increases, verification looks increase accordingly. Low variance generally creates less uncertainty, but can lead to greater uncertainty in the face of unexpected speech tokens. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} } @article{LuoYanYanetal.2016, author = {Luo, Yingyi and Yan, Ming and Yan, Shaorong and Zhou, Xiaolin and Inhoff, Albrecht W.}, title = {Syllabic tone articulation influences the identification and use of words during Chinese sentence reading: Evidence from ERP and eye movement recordings}, series = {The science of the total environment : an international journal for scientific research into the environment and its relationship with man}, volume = {16}, journal = {The science of the total environment : an international journal for scientific research into the environment and its relationship with man}, publisher = {Springer}, address = {New York}, issn = {1530-7026}, doi = {10.3758/s13415-015-0368-1}, pages = {72 -- 92}, year = {2016}, abstract = {In two experiments, we examined the contribution of articulation-specific features to visual word recognition during the reading of Chinese. In spoken Standard Chinese, a syllable with a full tone can be tone-neutralized through sound weakening and pitch contour change, and there are two types of two-character compound words with respect to their articulation variation. One type requires articulation of a full tone for each constituent character, and the other requires a full- and a neutral-tone articulation for the first and second characters, respectively. Words of these two types with identical first characters were selected and embedded in sentences. Native speakers of Standard Chinese were recruited to read the sentences. In Experiment 1, the individual words of a sentence were presented serially at a fixed pace while event-related potentials were recorded. This resulted in less-negative N100 and anterior N250 amplitudes and in more-negative N400 amplitudes when targets contained a neutral tone. Complete sentences were visible in Experiment 2, and eye movements were recorded while participants read. Analyses of oculomotor activity revealed shorter viewing durations and fewer refixations on-and fewer regressive saccades to-target words when their second syllable was articulated with a neutral rather than a full tone. Together, the results indicate that readers represent articulation-specific word properties, that these representations are routinely activated early during the silent reading of Chinese sentences, and that the representations are also used during later stages of word processing.}, language = {en} } @article{KadyamusumaDeBleserMayer2011, author = {Kadyamusuma, McLoddy R. and De Bleser, Ria and Mayer, J{\"o}rg}, title = {Lexical tone disruption in Shona after brain damage}, series = {Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal}, volume = {25}, journal = {Aphasiology : an international, interdisciplinary journal}, number = {10}, publisher = {Wiley}, address = {Hove}, issn = {0268-7038}, doi = {10.1080/02687038.2011.590966}, pages = {1239 -- 1260}, year = {2011}, abstract = {Background: The issue of production and perception of lexical tone in patients with brain lesions has been investigated mainly through East Asian languages and Norwegian. The present study investigated the lateralisation of lexical tone in Shona, a Bantu language. Van Lancker (1980) proposed a continuum scale of the levels of functional pitch in the speech signal. According to the functional lateralisation account (FLH), the left hemisphere (LH) is associated with highly structured pitch contrasts, such as phonological tone, whereas the right hemisphere (RH) is specialised for the least structured pitch functions cueing emotional and personal information. The extant data show that the ability to produce and identify lexical tone is frequently more impaired as a result of lesions to the LH than RH lesions. Aims: The present investigation focused on the lateralisation of lexical tone in Shona speakers. The study sought to validate if the scale of hemispheric lateralisation as proposed by Van Lancker (1980) is also valid for Shona, a Bantu language. Methods \& Procedures: We examined five LH damaged (LHD) patients and five RH (RHD) damaged patients using a confrontational picture-naming task and a lexical tone identification task of Shona lexical tone. The first experiment investigated the ability of LHD patients and RHD patients to identify Shona lexical tone in 60 disyllabic minimal pairs. The second experiment examined the ability of Shona brain-damaged patients to produce lexical tone using a confrontational picture-naming task with 120 lexical items. Outcomes \& Results: We observed a dissociation in the performance of both the LHD and RHD patients in the two tasks. Both groups were impaired in the tone identification task relative to the non-brain-damaged controls. However, RHD patients performed significantly better than the LHD patients in the tone identification task. On the other hand, both LHD and RHD groups were equally impaired in the tone production task in comparison to the controls. Conclusions: The discrepancy in the production and perception of Shona lexical tone for this group of brain-damaged patients shows that, although the two modes are related, they do not always get disrupted at the same level after brain damage. The results from the tone identification task suggest to a certain extent that the FLH is also valid for Shona. In order to account for all the data there is need to carefully consider alternative accounts like the acoustic cue hypothesis (Van Lancker \& Sidtis, 1992).}, language = {en} } @article{YueBastiaanseAlter2014, author = {Yue, Jinxing and Bastiaanse, Roelien and Alter, Kai}, title = {Cortical plasticity induced by rapid Hebbian learning of novel tonal word-forms: Evidence from mismatch negativity}, series = {Brain \& language : a journal of the neurobiology of language}, volume = {139}, journal = {Brain \& language : a journal of the neurobiology of language}, publisher = {Elsevier}, address = {San Diego}, issn = {0093-934X}, doi = {10.1016/j.bandl.2014.09.007}, pages = {10 -- 22}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Although several experiments reported rapid cortical plasticity induced by passive exposure to novel segmental patterns, few studies have devoted attention to the neural dynamics during the rapid learning of novel tonal word-forms in tonal languages, such as Chinese. In the current study, native speakers of Mandarin Chinese were exposed to acoustically matched real and novel segment-tone patterns. By recording their Mismatch Negativity (MMN) responses (an ERP indicator of long-term memory traces for spoken words), we found enhanced MMNs to the novel word-forms over the left-hemispheric region in the late exposure phase relative to the early exposure phase. In contrast, no significant changes were identified in MMN responses to the real word during familiarisation. Our results suggest a rapid Hebbian learning mechanism in the human neocortex which develops long-term memory traces for a novel segment-tone pattern by establishing new associations between the segmental and tonal representations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.}, language = {en} }