Headstart for speech segmentation: a neural signature for the anchor word effect

• Published in: Neuropsychologia 2016-02, Vol.82, p.189-199
• Main Authors: Cunillera, Toni, Laine, Matti, Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Electroencephalography; ERPs; Evoked Potentials; Humans; Lexical segmentation; Linguistics; Predictability in learning; Speech Perception - physiology; Speech segmentation; Statistical language learning; Verbal Learning - physiology; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0028-3932; 1873-3514
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.01.011

Learning a new language is an incremental process that builds upon previously acquired information. To shed light on the mechanisms of this incremental process, we studied the on-line neurophysiological correlates of the so-called anchor word effect where newly learned words facilitate segmentation of novel words from continuous speech. Higher segmentation performance was observed for speech streams embedded with newly learned anchor words. The anchor words elicited an enhanced Stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) component considered to be an index of expectation for incoming relevant information. Moreover, we confirmed a previously reported N400 amplitude increase for the to-be-segmented novel words, indicating a bottom-up learning process whereby new memory representations for the novel words emerge. We propose that the anchor word effect indexed by SPN reflects an expectation for an incoming novel word at the offset of the anchor word, thus facilitating the segmentation process. •Facilitatory effect on segmentation performance mediated by recently learned words.•Modulation of the SPN component reflecting expectation for novel words to occur.•Correlation between the SPN and behavioral performance.•A reduction of expectancy is associated to word learning.