Rules from words: a dynamic neural basis for a lawful linguistic process.

• Main Authors: David W Gow, A Conrad Nied
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2014-01-01
• Series: PLoS ONE
• Online Access: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/24465965/?tool=EBI

Listeners show a reliable bias towards interpreting speech sounds in a way that conforms to linguistic restrictions (phonotactic constraints) on the permissible patterning of speech sounds in a language. This perceptual bias may enforce and strengthen the systematicity that is the hallmark of phonological representation. Using Granger causality analysis of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-constrained magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) data, we tested the differential predictions of rule-based, frequency-based, and top-down lexical influence-driven explanations of processes that produce phonotactic biases in phoneme categorization. Consistent with the top-down lexical influence account, brain regions associated with the representation of words had a stronger influence on acoustic-phonetic regions in trials that led to the identification of phonotactically legal (versus illegal) word-initial consonant clusters. Regions associated with the application of linguistic rules had no such effect. Similarly, high frequency phoneme clusters failed to produce stronger feedforward influences by acoustic-phonetic regions on areas associated with higher linguistic representation. These results suggest that top-down lexical influences contribute to the systematicity of phonological representation.