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Liina Pylkkänen
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Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2020) 32 (10): 1975–1983.
Published: 01 October 2020
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Understanding speech in noise is a fundamental challenge for speech comprehension. This perceptual demand is amplified in a second language: It is a common experience in bars, train stations, and other noisy environments that degraded signal quality severely compromises second language comprehension. Through a novel design, paired with a carefully selected participant profile, we independently assessed signal-driven and knowledge-driven contributions to the brain bases of first versus second language processing. We were able to dissociate the neural processes driven by the speech signal from the processes that come from speakers' knowledge of their first versus second languages. The neurophysiological data show that, in combination with impaired access to top–down linguistic information in the second language, the locus of bilinguals' difficulty in understanding second language speech in noisy conditions arises from a failure to successfully perform a basic, low-level process: cortical entrainment to speech signals above the syllabic level.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2007) 19 (11): 1905–1921.
Published: 01 November 2007
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Although research on the neural bases of language has made significant progress on how the brain accesses the meanings of words, our understanding of sentence-level semantic composition remains limited. We studied the magnetoencephalography (MEG) responses elicited by expressions whose meanings involved an element not expressed in the syntax, which enabled us to investigate the brain correlates of semantic composition without confounds from syntactic composition. Sentences such as the author began the book , which asserts that an activity was begun although no activity is mentioned in the syntax, were contrasted with control sentences such as the author wrote the book , which involved no implicit meaning. These conditions were further compared with a semantically anomalous condition ( the author disgusted the book ). MEG responses to the object noun showed that silent meaning and anomaly are associated with distinct effects, silent meaning, but not anomaly, eliciting increased amplitudes in the anterior midline field (AMF) at 350–450 msec. The AMF was generated in ventromedial prefrontal areas, usually implicated for social cognition and theory of mind. Our results raise the possibility that silent meaning interpretation may share mechanisms with these neighboring domains of cognition.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2006) 18 (1): 97–109.
Published: 01 January 2006
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Most words in natural language are polysemous, that is, they can be used in more than one way. For example, paper can be used to refer to a substance made out of wood pulp or to a daily publication printed on that substance. Although virtually every sentence contains polysemy, there is little agreement as to how polysemy is represented in the mental lexicon. Do different uses of polysemous words involve access to a single representation or do our minds store distinct representations for each different sense? Here we investigated priming between senses with a combination of behavioral and magnetoencephalographic measures in order to test whether different senses of the same word involve identity or mere formal and semantic similarity. Our results show that polysemy effects are clearly distinct from similarity effects bilaterally. In the left hemisphere, sense-relatedness elicited shorter latencies of the M350 source, which has been hypothesized to index lexical activation. Concurrent activity in the right hemisphere, on the other hand, peaked later for sense-related than for unrelated target stimuli, suggesting competition between related senses. The obtained pattern of results supports models in which the representation of polysemy involves both representational identity and difference: Related senses connect to same abstract lexical representation, but are distinctly listed within that representation.