Identifying the neural structures and dynamics that regulate phonological structure

语言的系统模式是认知的基本属性。这种模式的一个方面， 限制语音的组合形成单词（音位结构），已被牵连， 制约与语言习得、感知和产出有关的各种过程，双语 使用，记忆，甚至影响非语言过程，包括新单词的记忆能力， 消费者对新品牌的反应。这种模式的变化，在各种常见的收购和 发育性沟通障碍我们将探讨这些影响的两种解释。一、发展于 语言学理论认为，语言使用者发现了一套抽象的、语言特有的规则或约束 这就决定了语言的使用。另一种观点是在联结主义和动态系统理论中发展起来的，认为 语音定位的限制出现自上而下的词汇对语音感知的影响。判别 这两种方法之间的区别是困难的，因为两者都能很好地解释行为数据。必须区别对待 这些账户之间的差异有两个原因。这个问题提供了一个解决争论的极好机会 抽象的语言规则/约束是否创造或简单地描述语言的模式。的 这一问题的解决对语言形式主义和联结主义 模拟涉及人类处理。在更直接的层面上，这项研究提供了机会， 确定一个共同的核心机制（无论是利用抽象的语言规则或自上而下的词汇 影响），解释和统一不同的语言和认知现象。过去为解决这些问题所作的努力 由于行为和BOLD成像范式的基本推理限制，问题已经失败。 因此，我们开发了新的工具和研究策略，使我们能够识别定向的模式， 大脑区域之间的相互作用（有效连接），并使用这些分析来绘制更强的 关于塑造认知的动态过程的推论。该领域的观察家认为， 方法已经提供了“决定性”的证据，以解决几十年来关于顶- 语音处理中的下行过程。该提案将扩展这些方法，并引入创新的 神经解码分析，我们将使用这些分析来表征类别（例如，规则、词语、抽象 支持规则应用所需的语音表示），这些语音表示被编码在局部大脑活动中。 使用这些方法，我们将确定我们所展示的自上而下的词汇过程是否会产生 与说话者语言中出现的模式处理有关的语音定位现象概括为 不熟悉的模式我们还将使用它们来识别规则与单词介导处理的基底， 为解释支持语音定向的表征和动态过程提供一个基线 自然语言处理的影响。

The systematic patterning of language is a fundamental property of cognition. One aspect of this patterning, constraints on the combination of speech sounds to form words (phonotactic structure), has been implicated in constraining diverse processes related to language acquisition, perception, and production, bilingual language use, memory and even influences non-linguistic processes including the memorability of novel words and consumer reaction to novel brand names. This patterning changes in a variety of common acquired and developmental communication disorders. We will explore two explanations for these effects. One, developed in linguistic theory, argues that language users discover a set of abstract, language-specific rules or constraints that shape language use. The other view, developed in connectionist and dynamic systems theory, argues that phonotactic constraints emerge from top-down lexical influences on speech perception. Discriminating between these approaches is difficult because both explain behavioral data well. It is essential to discriminate between these accounts for two reasons. This question offers an excellent opportunity to resolve the debate over whether abstract linguistic rules/constraints create or simply describe the patterning of language. The resolution of this question has fundamental implications for the way linguistic formalism and connectionist simulations relate to human processing. At a more immediate level, this research offers the opportunity to identify a common core mechanism (either the leveraged use of abstract linguistic rules or top-down lexical influences) that explains and unites diverse linguistic and cognitive phenomena. Past efforts to resolve these issues have failed because of fundamental inferential limitations of behavioral and BOLD imaging paradigms. Accordingly, we have developed new tools and research strategies that allow us to identify patterns of directed interaction between brain regions (effective connectivity), and use these analyses to draw much stronger inferences about the dynamic processes that shape cognition. Observers in the field have argued that our methods have already provided “definitive” evidence to resolve the decades old debate over the role of top- down processes in speech processing. This proposal would extend those methods, and introduce innovative neural decoding analyses that we will use to characterize the categories (e.g. rules, words, abstract phonological representations needed to support rule application) that are encoded in localized brain activity. Using these methods, we will determine whether top-down lexical processes that we have shown produce phonotactic phenomena related to the processing of patterns that occur in speaker's language generalize to unfamiliar patterns. We will also use them to identify the substrates of rule- versus word-mediated processing, to provide a baseline for interpreted the representations and dynamic processes that support phonotactic effects in natural language processing.