Abstract

A Mismatch Negativity (MMN) study was performed to investigate whether pre-attentive vowel percep- tion is influenced by phonological status. We compared the MMN response to the acoustic distinction between the allophonic variation [e–e] and phonemic contrast [e–i] present in a Southern-Italian variety (Tricase dialect). Clear MMNs were elicited for both the phonemic and allophonic conditions. Interest- ingly, a shorter latency was observed for the phonemic pair, but no significant amplitude difference was observed between the two conditions. Together, these results suggest that for isolated vowels, the phonological status of a vowel category is reflected in the latency of the MMN peak. The earlier latency of the phonemic condition argues for an easier parsing and encoding of phonemic contrasts in memory representations. Thus, neural computations mapping auditory inputs into higher perceptual representa- tions seem ‘sensitive’ to the contrastive/non-contrastive status of the sounds as determined by the listen- ers’ knowledge of the own phonological system.

Autore Pugliese

• Grimaldi Milko Antonino

Tutti gli autori

• Miglietta S. , Grimaldi , M. , Calabrese , A.

Titolo volume/Rivista

BRAIN AND LANGUAGE

Anno di pubblicazione

2013

ISSN

0093-934X

ISBN

Non Disponibile

Numero di citazioni Wos

8

Ultimo Aggiornamento Citazioni

28/04/2018

Numero di citazioni Scopus

Non Disponibile

Ultimo Aggiornamento Citazioni

Non Disponibile

Settori ERC

Non Disponibile

Codici ASJC

Non Disponibile