@article{YueAlterHowardetal.2017,
  author    = {Yue, Jinxing and Alter, Kai-Uwe and Howard, David and Bastiaanse, Roelien},
  title     = {Early access to lexical-level phonological representations of Mandarin word-forms},
  series = {Language, cognition and neuroscience},
  volume    = {32},
  journal   = {Language, cognition and neuroscience},
  number    = {9},
  publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group},
  address   = {Abingdon},
  issn      = {2327-3798},
  doi       = {10.1080/23273798.2017.1290261},
  pages     = {1148 -- 1163},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {An auditory habituation design was used to investigate whether lexical-level phonological representations in the brain can be rapidly accessed after the onset of a spoken word. We studied the N1 component of the auditory event-related electrical potential, and measured the amplitude decrements of N1 associated with the repetition of a monosyllabic tone word and an acoustically similar pseudo-word in Mandarin Chinese. Effects related to the contrastive onset consonants were controlled for by introducing two control words. We show that repeated pseudo-words consistently elicit greater amplitude decrements in N1 than real words. Furthermore, this lexicality effect is free from sensory fatigue or rapid learning of the pseudo-word. These results suggest that a lexical-level phonological representation of a spoken word can be accessed as early as 110ms after the onset of the word-form.},
  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}
}