Parallels in Processing Boundary Cues in Speech and Action

Frontiers in Psychology

Isabell Wartenburger¹  Romy Räling¹  Matt Hilton²  Birgit Elsner² 

[1] Department of Linguistics, Cognitive Sciences, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany;Department of Psychology, Cognitive Sciences, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany;

关键词: Closure Positive Shift (CPS);    Event-related Potentials (ERP);    speech segmentation;    action segmentation;    prosodic boundary cues;    prosody processing;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01566

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Speech and action sequences are continuous streams of information that can be segmented into sub-units. In both domains, this segmentation can be facilitated by perceptual cues contained within the information stream. In speech, prosodic cues (e.g., a pause, pre-boundary lengthening, and pitch rise) mark boundaries between words and phrases, while boundaries between actions of an action sequence can be marked by kinematic cues (e.g., a pause, pre-boundary deceleration). The processing of prosodic boundary cues evokes an Event-related Potentials (ERP) component known as the Closure Positive Shift (CPS), and it is possible that the CPS reflects domain-general cognitive processes involved in segmentation, given that the CPS is also evoked by boundaries between subunits of non-speech auditory stimuli. This study further probed the domain-generality of the CPS and its underlying processes by investigating electrophysiological correlates of the processing of boundary cues in sequences of spoken verbs (auditory stimuli; Experiment 1; N = 23 adults) and actions (visual stimuli; Experiment 2; N = 23 adults). The EEG data from both experiments revealed a CPS-like broadly distributed positivity during the 250 ms prior to the onset of the post-boundary word or action, indicating similar electrophysiological correlates of boundary processing across domains, suggesting that the cognitive processes underlying speech and action segmentation might also be shared.

【 授权许可】

Unknown