Identifying the neural structures and dynamics that regulate phonological structure

语言的系统化模式是认知的一个基本属性。这种图案的一个方面， 对语音组合以形成单词(音位结构)的限制，已在 限制与语言习得、感知和产出相关的不同过程，双语 使用，记忆，甚至影响非语言过程，包括新词和 消费者对新品牌名称的反应。这种图案的变化在各种常见的后天和后天 发育性沟通障碍。我们将探索对这些效应的两种解释。其一，开发于 语言学理论认为，语言使用者发现了一套抽象的、特定于语言的规则或约束 形体语言的使用。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 音位制约来自自上而下的词汇对言语知觉的影响。辨别性 在这两种方法之间进行比较是困难的，因为这两种方法都很好地解释了行为数据。歧视是必不可少的。 有两个原因。这个问题提供了一个很好的机会来解决这场辩论 抽象的语言规则/约束是否创造或简单地描述了语言的模式。这个 这个问题的解决对语言形式主义和连接主义的方式具有根本的影响 模拟与人类处理有关。在更直接的层面上，这项研究提供了一个机会 确定共同的核心机制(利用抽象语言规则或自上而下的词汇 影响)，解释并统一了不同的语言和认知现象。过去为解决这些问题所做的努力 问题之所以失败，是因为行为成像和大胆成像范式的基本推理限制。 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)，并使用这些分析得出更强的结论 关于塑造认知的动态过程的推论。该领域的观察家认为，我们的 一些方法已经提供了“确凿的”证据来解决几十年来围绕TOP的作用的争论-- 语音处理中的下行过程。这项提案将扩展这些方法，并引入创新 神经解码分析，我们将使用这些分析来表征类别(例如规则、单词、摘要 支持规则应用所需的语音表示)，在局部大脑活动中编码。 使用这些方法，我们将确定我们已经展示的自上而下的词汇过程是否产生 与处理说话人语言中出现的模式有关的音位现象概括为 不熟悉的模式。我们还将使用它们来识别规则中介处理与文字中介处理的基础， 为支持语音定向的解释表示和动态过程提供基准 自然语言处理中的影响。

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.