Syntax as a reflex: Neurophysiological evidence for early automaticity of grammatical processing

It has been a matter of debate whether the specifically human capacity to process syntactic information draws on attentional resources or is automatic. To address this issue, we recorded neurophysiological indicators of syntactic processing to spoken sentences while subjects were distracted to diffe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Brain and language 2008-03, Vol.104 (3), p.244-253
Main Authors: Pulvermüller, Friedemann, Shtyrov, Yury, Hasting, Anna S., Carlyon, Robert P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustics
Attention
Attention - physiology
Auditory Discrimination
Automaticity
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Brain
Cognitive Processes
Discrimination, Psychological - physiology
EEG
Electroencephalography
Electrophysiology
ERN
Event-related brain potential
Evoked Potentials, Auditory - physiology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Grammar
Humans
Inferences
Interactivity
Language
Language Processing
Linguistic Input
Linguistics
Mismatch Negativity
MMN
Modularity
Neurology
Oral Language
Physiology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reflex - physiology
Sentences
Speech
Speech Perception - physiology
Syntactic brain response
Syntax
Task Analysis
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Summary:It has been a matter of debate whether the specifically human capacity to process syntactic information draws on attentional resources or is automatic. To address this issue, we recorded neurophysiological indicators of syntactic processing to spoken sentences while subjects were distracted to different degrees from language processing. Subjects were either passively distracted, by watching a silent video film, or their attention was actively streamed away from the language input by performing a demanding acoustic signal detection task. An early index of syntactic violations, the syntactic Mismatch Negativity (sMMN), distinguished between grammatical and ungrammatical speech even under strongest distraction. The magnitude of the early sMMN (at
ISSN:0093-934X
1090-2155
DOI:10.1016/j.bandl.2007.05.002