Neural Changes Associated with Nonspeech Auditory Category Learning Parallel Those of Speech Category Acquisition

■ Native language experience plays a critical role in shaping speech categorization, but the exact mechanisms by which it does so are not well understood. Investigating category learning of nonspeech sounds with which listeners have no prior experience allows their experience to be systematically controlled in a way that is impossible to achieve by studying natural speech acquisition, and it provides a means of probing the boundaries and constraints that general auditory perception and cognition bring to the task of speech category learning. In this study, we used a multimodal, video-game-based implicit learning paradigm to train participants to categorize acoustically complex, nonlinguistic sounds. Mismatch negativity responses to the nonspeech stimuli were collected before and after training to investigate the degree to which neural changes supporting the learning of these nonspeech categories parallel those typically observed for speech category acquisition. Results indicate that...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: JOCN
• Authors: Ran Liu, Lori L. Holt
• Keywords: JOCN 2011, Mismatch Negativity, Natural Speech Acquisition, Speech Category