Phonological Neighborhood Effects in Spoken Word Production: An fMRI Study

摘要

The current study examined the neural systems underlyingnlexically conditioned phonetic variation in spoken word production.nParticipants were asked to read aloud singly presentednwords, which either had a voiced minimal pair (MP) neighborn(e.g., cape) or lacked a minimal pair (NMP) neighbor (e.g., cake).nThe voiced neighbor never appeared in the stimulus set. Behavioralnresults showed longer voice-onset time for MP target words,nreplicating earlier behavioral results [Baese-Berk,M., & Goldrick, M.nMechanisms of interaction in speech production. Language andnCognitive Processes, 24, 527–554, 2009]. fMRI results revealednreduced activation for MP words compared to NMP words in annetwork including left posterior superior temporal gyrus, the supramarginalngyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, and precentral gyrus.nThese findings support cascade models of spoken word productionnand show that neural activation at the lexical level modulatesnactivation in those brain regions involved in lexical selection, phonologicalnplanning, and, ultimately, motor plans for production.nThe facilitatory effects for words with MP neighbors suggest thatncompetition effects reflect the overlap inherent in the phonologicalnrepresentation of the target word and its MP neighbor. ■