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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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Cunillera, Toni, Gomila, Antoni, Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2008
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2263048/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18282274
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2202-9-23
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author Cunillera, Toni
Gomila, Antoni
Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni
author_facet Cunillera, Toni
Gomila, Antoni
Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni
author_sort Cunillera, Toni
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-22630482008-03-06 Beneficial effects of word final stress in segmenting a new language: evidence from ERPs Cunillera, Toni Gomila, Antoni Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni BMC Neurosci Research Article 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. BioMed Central 2008-02-18 /pmc/articles/PMC2263048/ /pubmed/18282274 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2202-9-23 Text en Copyright © 2008 Cunillera et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Cunillera, Toni
Gomila, Antoni
Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni
Beneficial effects of word final stress in segmenting a new language: evidence from ERPs
title Beneficial effects of word final stress in segmenting a new language: evidence from ERPs
title_full Beneficial effects of word final stress in segmenting a new language: evidence from ERPs
title_fullStr Beneficial effects of word final stress in segmenting a new language: evidence from ERPs
title_full_unstemmed Beneficial effects of word final stress in segmenting a new language: evidence from ERPs
title_short Beneficial effects of word final stress in segmenting a new language: evidence from ERPs
title_sort beneficial effects of word final stress in segmenting a new language: evidence from erps
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2263048/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18282274
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2202-9-23
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