Monolingual and bilingual participants performed a Proactive Interference task in verbal and nonverbal conditions while EEG was recorded. Behavioral results showed faster responses for bilinguals on interference trials in the nonverbal condition, and electrophysiological results indicated greater attentional control for bilinguals. ROI analyses showed this pattern for bilinguals mainly in the verbal

The ability to string together words into a structured arrangement capable of conveying nuanced information is key to speech production. The assessment of the neural bases for structuring sentences has been challenged by the need of experts to delineate the aberrant morphosyntactic structures in aphasic speech. Most studies have relied on focused tasks with limited ecological validity. We characterized

In adults, perceptual learning for speech is constrained, such that learning of novel pronunciations is less likely to occur if the (e.g., visual) context indicates that they are transient. However, adults have had a lifetime of experience with the types of cues that signal stable vs. transient speech variation. We ask whether visual context affects toddlers’ learning of a novel speech pattern. Across

An important aim of research on bilingualism is to understand how the brain adapts to the demands of using more than one language. In this paper, we argue that pursuing such an aim entails valuing our research as a discovery process that acts on variety. Prescriptions about sample size and methodology, rightly aimed at establishing a sound basis for generalization, should be understood as being in

Bilingual language representation and cognitive control effects may reflect the dynamic interactions among the complex learning environment, genotype of the individual, and developing cognitive abilities. In this paper we propose a framework considering such interactions. Specifically, we present a nonlinear, developmentally-oriented perspective in which each individual represents a developmental trajectory

The underlying mechanisms that adapt with L2 learning are still poorly understood. The present longitudinal study examined the effects of L2 learning on grey matter structure of Chinese college freshmen majoring in English. Participants were scanned twice, one year apart. Our voxel-based morphometry analyses revealed that gray matter volume (GMV) decreased in the left anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)

An important aspect of aphasia is the observation of behavioral variability between and within individual participants. Our study addresses variability in sentence comprehension in German, by testing 21 individuals with aphasia and a control group and involving (a) several constructions (declarative sentences, relative clauses and control structures with an overt pronoun or PRO), (b) three response

How we remember the things that we see can be shaped by our prior experiences. Here, we examine how linguistic and sensory experiences interact to influence visual memory. Objects in a visual search that shared phonology (cat-cast) or semantics (dog-fox) with a target were later remembered better than unrelated items. Phonological overlap had a greater influence on memory when targets were cued by

Some previous studies have shown that creating a language context in which words from both languages are interspersed into a flanker task improves executive control performance for bilinguals, but these studies have produced inconsistent results. The studies have used different versions of the task and not included monolinguals, limiting generalization. Here, English-Chinese multilinguals and English

Across two experiments, we examine the relationship between individual differences in working memory (WM) and the acquisition of non-native speech categories in adulthood. While WM is associated with individual differences in a variety of learning tasks, successful acquisition of speech categories is argued to be contingent on WM-independent procedural-learning mechanisms. Thus, the role of WM in speech

Normal aging is associated with speech perception in noise (SPiN) difficulties. The objective of this study was to determine if SPiN performance can be enhanced by intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) in young and older adults. Method We developed a sub-lexical SPiN test to evaluate the contribution of age, hearing, and cognition to SPiN performance in young and older adults. iTBS was applied

The aims of the present ERP study were twofold. First, to determine whether a previous study on creative cognition could be replicated, and second, to extend these findings by examining individual differences in creativity. Conceptual expansion, a capacity that is central to creativity, was induced via the processing of novel metaphors. Brain activity patterns in relation to these were compared to

Consistency and regularity, concepts that arise, respectively, from the connectionist and classical cognitive modeling work in alphabetic reading, are two ways to characterize the orthography-to-phonology mappings of written languages. These concepts have been applied to Chinese reading research despite important differences across writing systems, with mixed results concerning their relative importance

Musical experience has been found to aid speech perception. This electroencephalography study further examined whether and how musical expertise affects high-level predictive semantic processing in speech comprehension. Musicians and non-musicians listened to semantically strongly/weakly constraining sentences, with each sentence being primed by a congruent/incongruent sentence-prosody. At the target

Speech is processed less efficiently from discontinuous, mixed talkers than one consistent talker, but little is known about the neural mechanisms for processing talker variability. Here, we measured psychophysiological responses to talker variability using electroencephalography (EEG) and pupillometry while listeners performed a delayed recall of digit span task. Listeners heard and recalled seven-digit

Temporal attributes of pitch processing at cortical and subcortical levels are differentially weighted and well-coordinated. The question is whether language experience induces functional modulation of hemispheric preference complemented by brainstem ear symmetry for pitch processing. Brainstem frequency-following and cortical pitch responses were recorded concurrently from Mandarin and English participants

This study investigated cross-linguistic interference in German low-proficient late learners of Spanish. We examined the modulating influence of gender congruency and cognate status using a syntactic violation paradigm. Behavioural results demonstrated that participants were more sensitive to similarities at the syntactic level (gender congruency) than to phonological and orthographic overlap (cognate

Learning words through contextual inference is a key way to enlarge one’s vocabulary especially for adults. However, few studies focused on the effects of different information contained in contexts on novel word learning. The present study used behavioral and fNIRS techniques to investigate the influences of positive, neutral and negative emotions inherent in self-related or other-related referential

This study investigated the neural basis of compound word processing by using fMRI and Chinese two-character compounds for lexical decision. Semantic transparency and morphemic neighborhood size were manipulated to augment the processing profile for measurement. The behavioral results disclosed a semantic transparency effect and its interaction with the neighborhood size, which supported existence

EEG network modularity, as a proxy for cognitive plasticity, has been proposed to be a more reliable neural marker than power and coherence in predicting learning outcomes. The present study examined the associations between resting state EEG network modularity and both L1 Chinese and L2 English literacy skills among 90 Hong Kong first to fifth graders. The modularity indices of different frequency

Using graph theory, we examined topological organization of the language network in Chinese children with poor reading during an auditory rhyming task and a visual spelling task, compared to reading-matched controls and age-matched controls. First, poor readers (PR) showed reduced clustering coefficient in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and higher nodal efficiency in the bilateral superior temporal

Bilingualism is a natural laboratory for studying whether the brain’s structural connectome is influenced by different aspects of language experience. However, evidence on how distinct components of bilingual experience may contribute to structural brain adaptations is mixed. The lack of consistency, however, may depend, at least in part, on methodological choices in data acquisition and processing

Cross-linguistic similarity is a term so broad and multi-faceted that it is not easily defined. The degree of overlap between languages is known to affect lexical competition during online processing and production, and its relevance for second language acquisition has also been established. Nevertheless, determining what makes two languages similar (or not) increases in complexity when multiple levels

Linguistic and vocal information are thought to be differentially processed since the early stages of speech perception, but it remains unclear if this differentiation also concerns automatic processes of memory retrieval. The aim of this ERP study was to compare the automatic retrieval processes for newly learned voices vs phonemes. In a longitudinal experiment, two groups of participants were trained

We investigated how phonologically similar words are encoded and retrieved from memory during sentence processing across younger and older adults. Critical sentences included two phonologically similar or dissimilar noun phrases (henceforth NPs) followed by a pronoun. We examined brain activity time-locked to the onsets of the second NP, and the pronoun to investigate the encoding and retrieval of

Currently there are no reliable means of identifying infants at-risk for later language disorders. Infant neural responses to rhythmic stimuli may offer a solution, as neural tracking of rhythm is atypical in children with developmental language disorders. However, infant brain recordings are noisy. As a first step to developing accurate neural biomarkers, we investigate whether infant brain responses

Dopamine, the main catecholamine neurotransmitter in the brain, is predominately produced in the basal ganglia and released to various brain regions including the frontal cortex, midbrain and brainstem. Dopamine’s effects are widespread and include modulation of a number of voluntary and innate behaviors. Vigilant regulation and modulation of dopamine levels throughout the brain is imperative for proper

Recent findings have revealed that the right hemisphere (RH) is uniquely involved in integrating perceptual information from linguistic input to simulate a mental model of that input. We extend on these findings by testing whether meaning is generated from such models. Participants (N = 37) heard auditory passages describing the visuospatial arrangement of elements into a perceptual representation

Event-related potentials (ERPs) can provide important insights into underlying language processes in both unimpaired and neurologically impaired populations and may be particularly useful in aphasia. This scoping review was conducted to provide a comprehensive summary of how ERPs have been used with people with aphasia (PWA), with the goal of exploring the potential clinical application of ERPs in

It remains unclear whether the process of speech tracking, which facilitates speech segmentation, reflects top-down mechanisms related to prior linguistic models or stimulus-driven mechanisms, or possibly both. To address this, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG) responses from native and non-native speakers of English that had different prior experience with the English language but heard acoustically

Lexical-processing declines are a hallmark of aging. However, the extent of these declines may vary as a function of different factors. Motivated by findings from neurodegenerative diseases and healthy aging, we tested whether 'motor-relatedness' (the degree to which words are associated with particular human body movements) might moderate such declines. We investigated this question by examining data

This study aimed to identify the functional brain networks underlying the distinctions between automatic and controlled handwriting in Chinese. Network-based analysis was applied to functional magnetic resonance imaging data collected while adult participants performed a copying task under automatic and speed-controlled conditions. We found significant differences between automatic and speed-controlled

The extent to which higher-order representations can be extracted from more than one word in parallel remains an unresolved issue with theoretical import. Here, we used ERPs to investigate the timing with which semantic information is extracted from parafoveal words. Participants saw animal and non-animal targets paired with response congruent or incongruent flankers in a semantic categorization task

Previous studies have shown that reading experience reshapes speech processing. The orthography can be implemented in the brain by restructuring the phonological representations or being co-activated during spoken word recognition. This study utilized event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging and functional connectivity analysis to examine the neural mechanism underlying two types of orthographic

The effects of lexical meaning and lexical familiarity on auditory deviance detection were investigated by presenting oddball sequences of words, while participants ignored the stimuli. Stimulus sequences were composed of words that were varied in word class (nouns vs. functions words) and frequency of language use (high vs. low frequency) in a factorial design with the roles of frequently presented

We used phonological priming and ERPs to investigate the organization of the lexicon in American Sign Language. Across go/no-go repetition detection and semantic categorization tasks, targets in related pairs that shared handshape and location elicited smaller N400s than targets in unrelated pairs, indicative of facilitated processing. Handshape-related targets also elicited smaller N400s than unrelated

The inhibition deficit hypothesis (IDH) proposed that individual differences in inhibitory control is an underlying reason for age-related language decline. This study examined whether the hypothesis holds within the domain of lexico-semantic retrieval. Sixty-six older adults aged 60–79 were tested in a semantic fluency task comprising 16 categories; each response was classified as automatic or controlled

Phonetic categories have undefined edges, such that individual tokens that belong to different speech sound categories may occupy the same region in acoustic space. In continuous speech, there are multiple sources of top-down information (e.g., lexical, semantic) that help to resolve the identity of an ambiguous phoneme. Of interest is how these top-down constraints interact with ambiguity at the phonetic

While much research has addressed the neural basis of lexical access and the composition of lexical items into larger meanings, little is known about how the semantic properties of individual words affect composition. Research on modifier-noun combinations has, however, shown that composition related activity in the left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) is sensitive to the conceptual specificity of the

We investigated online auditory comprehension of dialectal variation in English syntax with event-related potential (ERP) analysis of electroencephalographic data. The syntactic variant under investigation was the double modal, comprising two consecutive auxiliary verbs (e.g., might could). This construction appears across subregional dialects of Southern United States English and expresses indirectness

Individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) exhibit differential impairment patterns in noun and verb naming, but it remains unclear whether anomia treatment results in similar improvements in noun and verb naming. Therefore, we examined the immediate and long-term (3-months post-treatment) behavioral and neural effects of an anomia treatment on object and action naming skills in PPA. A case-series

The psychosocial well-being of children and adolescents with epilepsy is affected by comorbid language deficits. Little is known about the focus of current research in language and epilepsy. A systematic review of research was conducted to identify gaps in knowledge regarding language and epilepsy. In total, 83 published articles were eligible for inclusion. More studies included samples presenting

Second language (L2) learners differ greatly in language proficiency, which is partially explained by variability in native language (L1) skills. The present fMRI study explored the neural underpinnings of the L1-L2 link. Twenty L2 learners completed a tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) task that required retrieving words in L1. Low-proficiency L2 learners showed greater functional connectivity for correct and

In Chinese, when objects are named with their quantity, a numeral classifier must be inserted between the quantifier and the noun to produce a grammatically correct quantifier + classifier + noun phrase. In this study, we adopted the picture-word interference paradigm to examine participants' naming latencies for multiple objects and their electroencephalogram in four conditions by manipulating two

Deaf readers provide unique insights into how the reading circuit is modified by altered linguistic and sensory input. We investigated whether reading-matched deaf and hearing readers (n = 62) exhibit different ERP effects associated with orthographic to phonological mapping (N250) or lexico-semantic processes (N400). In a visual masked priming paradigm, participants performed a go/no-go categorization

During reading, we can process and integrate information from words allocated in the parafoveal region. However, whether we extract and process the meaning of parafoveal words is still under debate. Here, we obtained Fixation-Related Potentials in a Basque-Spanish bilingual sample during a Spanish reading task. By using the boundary paradigm, we presented different parafoveal previews that could be

Prior knowledge and context-specific expectations influence the perception of sensory events, e.g., speech, as well as complex higher-order cognitive operations like text reading. Here, we focused on pre-stimulus neural activity during sentence reading to examine text type-dependent attentional bias in anticipation of written stimuli, capitalizing on the functional relevance of brain oscillations in

How domain-general cognitive control is engaged in language processing remains debated. We address how linguistic processes are monitored and regulated by analyzing the effects of previous-trial sentence correctness on the P600 component of the event-related potential (ERP) in the current-trial. In data from a previous experiment about processing spoken sentences, P600 amplitudes to both correct and

Here we examine the role of visuospatial working memory (WM) during the comprehension of multimodal discourse with co-speech iconic gestures. EEG was recorded as healthy adults encoded either a sequence of one (low load) or four (high load) dot locations on a grid and rehearsed them until a free recall response was collected later in the trial. During the rehearsal period of the WM task, participants

Conventional metaphor, irony, and literal language processing were compared. Thirty right-handed participants (21–34 years) performed a sequential-statement ERP-paradigm. A left-frontal Late Anterior Negative Slow Wave (LANSW, 450–1000 ms) was significantly greater for metaphors and by visual tendency greater for irony, compared to literal statements. A centroparietal N400 (300–450 ms) and a centroparietal

Perceptual adaptation is an active cognitive process where listeners re-analyse speech categories based on new contexts/situations/talkers. It involves top-down influences from higher cortical levels on lower-level auditory processes. Individuals with congenital amusia have impaired pitch processing with reduced connectivity between frontal and temporal regions. This study examined whether deficits

The approach of cross-language brain decoding is to use models of brain decoding from one language to decode stimuli of another language. It has the potential to provide new insights into how our brain represents multiple languages. While it is possible to decode semantic information across different languages from neuroimaging data, the approach’s overall success remains to be tested and depends on

The basal ganglia-thalamocortical (BGTC) loop may underlie speech deficits in developmental stuttering. In this study, we investigated the relationship between abnormal cortical neural oscillations and structural integrity alterations in adults who stutter (AWS) using a novel magnetoencephalography (MEG) guided tractography approach. Beta oscillations were analyzed using sensorimotor speech MEG, and

Although there are considerable individual differences in eye movements during text reading, their neural correlates remain unclear. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the first-pass fixation duration (FPFD) in natural reading and resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) in the brain. We defined the brain regions associated with early visual processing, word identification

We examined lexical stress processing in English-French bilinguals. Auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) responses were recorded in response to English and French pseudowords, whose primary stress occurred either on a language-consistent "usual" or language-inconsistent "unusual" syllable. In most conditions, the pseudowords elicited two consecutive MMNs, and somewhat surprisingly, these MMNs were not

The ability to selectively attend to a speech signal amid competing sounds is a significant challenge, especially for listeners trying to comprehend non-native speech. Attention is critical to direct neural processing resources to the most essential information. Here, neural tracking of the speech envelope of an English story narrative and cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) to non-speech stimuli

Listeners perceive speech sounds categorically. While group-level differences in categorical perception have been observed in children or individuals with reading disorders, recent findings suggest that typical adults vary in how categorically they perceive sounds. The current study investigated neural sources of individual variability in categorical perception of speech. Fifty-seven participants rated

Skilled reading requires years of practice associating visual symbols with speech sounds. Over the course of the learning process, this association becomes effortless and automatic. Here we test whether automatic activation of spoken-language circuits in response to visual words is a hallmark of skilled reading. Magnetoencephalography was used to measure word-selective responses under multiple cognitive