Beneficial effects of word final stress in segmenting a new language: evidence from ERPs

Background: How do listeners manage to recognize words in an unfamiliar language? The physical continuity of the signal, in which real silent pauses between words are lacking, makes it a difficult task. However, there are multiple cues that can be exploited to localize word boundaries and to segment...

ver descrição completa

Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Cunillera, Toni, Gomila, Antoni, Rodríguez Fornells, Antoni
Formato: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2008
País:España
Recursos:Universidad de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de la UB
OAI Identifier:oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/36391
Acesso em linha:https://hdl.handle.net/2445/36391
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:Desenvolupament de programari d'aplicació
Estrès (Psicologia)
Development of application software
Stress (Psychology)
Descrição
Resumo:Background: How do listeners manage to recognize words in an unfamiliar language? The physical continuity of the signal, in which real silent pauses between words are lacking, makes it a difficult task. However, there are multiple cues that can be exploited to localize word boundaries and to segment the acoustic signal. In the present study, word-stress was manipulated with statistical information and placed in different syllables within trisyllabic nonsense words to explore the result of the combination of the cues in an online word segmentation task. Results: The behavioral results showed that words were segmented better when stress was placed on the final syllables than when it was placed on the middle or first syllable. The electrophysiological results showed an increase in the amplitude of the P2 component, which seemed to be sensitive to word-stress and its location within words. Conclusion: The results demonstrated that listeners can integrate specific prosodic and distributional cues when segmenting speech. An ERP component related to word-stress cues was identified: stressed syllables elicited larger amplitudes in the P2 component than unstressed ones.