TY - JOUR
T1 - Lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on language processing
AU - Kleinman, Daniel
AU - Morgan M, Adam
AU - Ostrand, Rachel
AU - Wittenberg, Eva
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Public Library of Science. All rights reserved.
PY - 2022/6
Y1 - 2022/6
N2 - A central question in understanding human language is how people store, access, and comprehend words. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic presented a natural experiment to investigate whether language comprehension can be changed in a lasting way by external experiences. We leveraged the sudden increase in the frequency of certain words (mask, isolation, lockdown) to investigate the effects of rapid contextual changes on word comprehension, measured over 10 months within the first year of the pandemic. Using the phonemic restoration paradigm, in which listeners are presented with ambiguous auditory input and report which word they hear, we conducted four online experiments with adult participants across the United States (combined N = 899). We find that the pandemic has reshaped language processing for the long term, changing how listeners process speech and what they expect from ambiguous input. These results show that abrupt changes in linguistic exposure can cause enduring changes to the language system.
AB - A central question in understanding human language is how people store, access, and comprehend words. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic presented a natural experiment to investigate whether language comprehension can be changed in a lasting way by external experiences. We leveraged the sudden increase in the frequency of certain words (mask, isolation, lockdown) to investigate the effects of rapid contextual changes on word comprehension, measured over 10 months within the first year of the pandemic. Using the phonemic restoration paradigm, in which listeners are presented with ambiguous auditory input and report which word they hear, we conducted four online experiments with adult participants across the United States (combined N = 899). We find that the pandemic has reshaped language processing for the long term, changing how listeners process speech and what they expect from ambiguous input. These results show that abrupt changes in linguistic exposure can cause enduring changes to the language system.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85132185708&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0269242
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0269242
M3 - Article
C2 - 35704594
AN - SCOPUS:85132185708
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 17
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 6
M1 - e0269242
ER -