PROCESSING OF SPEECH AND NON-SPEECH TONAL INFORMATION BY NATIVE ANDNONNATIVE TONE LANGUAGE SPEAKERS: AN EVENT-RELATEDELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL STUDY

摘要

One long-deliberated question in speech perception is the extent to which it involves language-specific mechanisms. Some research findings support the independence of speech and nonspeech processing (1-3). Others indicate general auditory mechanisms shared by speech and nonspeech processing (4-7). Lexical tones present an interesting case at the suprasegmental level to study brain organization of auditory and linguistic processing as a function of learning experience. Imaging data for lexical tones have shown right-hemisphere dominance for auditory processing and left-hemisphere dominance for linguistic processing (8-10). However, the dynamic interplay between the two processes and the temporal courses have not been fully addressed (6). The present investigation employed high-density ERPs to examine two basic issues: (a) whether auditory processing of pitch patterns fundamentally differs from lexical tone processing, and (b) whether there is automatic transfer of learning for tonal pattern processing from speech to nonspeech in tone language speakers but not in non-tone language users.