Electrophysiological correlates of category goodness

Maritza Rivera-Gaxiola*, Mark H. Johnson, Gergely Csibra, Annette Karmiloff-Smith

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

We report the results obtained from a behavioural and electrophysiological study. A synthesised continuum going from labial /ba/ to retroflex /d + (Combining dot below sign)a/ through dental /da/ was tested for category goodness. Native English speakers rated different tokens from each category as good, bad or ambiguous. The results showed that not all of the representatives of each category were ideal and that the categories tested have an internal structure. The electrophysiological study evaluated whether event related potentials (ERPs) mirrored the goodness judgements. During a passive oddball task, the same participants were exposed to native /ba/-/da/, Hindi dental /da/-retroflex /d + (Combining dot below sign)a/ and within-category /ba/-/ba/ contrasts. Results showed that participants pre-attentively perceive the differences in all cases, as shown by mis-match negativities (MMN), late positive deflections (LPD) or greater N1 and/or P2 components for deviant stimuli. Acoustic sensitivities, categorical perception and category goodness all contributed to the waveforms obtained. We attribute the ERP effects to a combination of (1) prototypes built from initial sensitivities, (2) reinforcement with exposure to one's native language and (3) no permanent loss of the initial boundaries explains the effects observed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-11
Number of pages11
JournalBehavioural Brain Research
Volume112
Issue number1-2
DOIs
StatePublished - 2000
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Category-goodness
  • Cognitive neuroscience
  • Event-related potentials (ERP)
  • Late positive deflections (LPD)
  • Mis-match negatives (MMN)
  • Perceptual magnet effect
  • Synthesised speech

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