Doctoral Dissertation Research: Phonological Prediction in Spoken Language Processing

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Speech unfolds rapidly in time, yet native speakers’ comprehension is generally accurate and efficient. Previous research suggests that one reason why language processing seems to be so effortless and robust is that language users can use context to predict upcoming language input. It is generally agreed that semantic and morpho-syntactic features of a highly expected word can be pre-activated in such predictive language processing. However, there is an ongoing debate about whether the phonological form of a predictable word can also be routinely pre-activated in real-time sentence processing. This project addresses this debate by exploiting the phenomena of anticipatory tonal variations. The results of this study will advance our knowledge on the role of anticipatory tonal variations in spoken-word recognition and speech processing, and on phonological form pre-activation in predictive language processing. This will in turn inform our understanding of the cognitive process in language perception.This project first examines how anticipatory tonal variation cues can facilitate tonal prediction of an upcoming word in speech perception using eye-tracking technique. Then, the study will examine whether listeners can pre-activate the tonal form of a predictable word by measuring their brain responses to the preceding word using electroencephalography (EEG) technique. Crucially, the expected word in some experimental conditions will be substituted by an unexpected one that shares or does not share the tonal form with the expected word, so the anticipatory tonal variation cues in the preceding word is either concordant or incompatible with the tone of the expected word. The guiding hypothesis is that if the tonal form of the expected word can be pre-activated, there should be larger amplitude modulation of event-related potentials (ERPs) to the preceding word when the unexpected word and the predicted word differ in tone; however, if there is little or no phonological form pre-activation, there should be little or no ERP amplitude modulation prior to encountering the unexpected wordThis award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.