Collaborative Proposal: Neuromagnetic Correlates of American Dialect Perception

人类非常善于识别他人的声音，不仅能识别他们交流的信息，还能识别与他们交谈的人的社会和个人信息。例如，当我们接电话时，我们可以很容易地认出是我们认识的人（妈妈）还是我们不认识的人（电话推销员）。听众还能迅速判断说话者的年龄、性别和来自哪里。本项目使用神经磁脑成像技术——脑磁图（MEG），研究人类的行为和大脑对相同或不同方言和性别的说话者自发讲话的早期反应。研究人员将检查听者对美国英语方言刺激的评级、识别和辨别，同时被动记录听者的大脑活动。这些大脑活动数据将与方言差异和行为测量相关联。虽然在韵律的早期神经关联方面已经有相当多的工作，但很少有工作研究在偏见和歧视领域具有现实重要性的言语特征的类别内和跨类别感知的神经基础。研究语言的社会方面的研究人员获得脑成像技术的机会有限，因此这项合作研究将有助于语音感知，神经磁脑研究和社会语言学，并将促进这些领域之间的新联系。此外，这项研究还有其他重要的社会和法律意义，因为它的结果将直接影响法院如何解释导致歧视和偏见的自动神经过程和更高层次的认知处理。

Humans are remarkably adept at recognizing other human voices, not only for the messages they communicate, but also for social and personal information about the person they are talking with. For example, when we answer the telephone we can easily recognize whether it is someone we know (Mom) or someone we don't (a telemarketer). Listeners also make rapid judgments about a speaker's age, gender and where they are from. This project investigates human behavioral and early brain responses to the recorded spontaneous speech of speakers with the same or different dialects and genders using a neuromagnetic brain imaging technology, magnetoencephalography (MEG). Investigators will examine the rating, identification and discrimination of American English dialect stimuli by listeners while their brain activity is passively recorded. These brain activity data will be correlated with dialect differences and behavioral measures. While there has been considerable work on early neural correlates of prosody, very little work has examined the neural basis of within-and across-category perception of speech characteristics that have real-life importance in areas of prejudice and discrimination. Researchers investigating social aspects of language have had limited access to brain imaging technologies, and consequently this collaborative research will contribute to speech perception, neuromagnetic brain research and sociolinguistics, and will foster new connections between these fields. Moreover, this research has other important social and legal implications because its results will bear directly on how courts can and will interpret automatic neural processes and higher order cognitive processing resulting in discrimination and prejudice.