Finding words: an investigation with electrophysiological measures on the role of statistical cues in language acquisition

• Grant number: 24/01386-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate (Direct)
• Start date: June 01, 2024
• End date: May 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Human Development Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Débora de Hollanda Souza
• Grantee: Isabella Toselli Prequero
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 14/50909-8 - INCT 2014: Behavior, Cognition and Teaching (INCT-ECCE): relational learning and symbolic functioning, AP.TEM
• Associated scholarship(s): 25/00382-8 - Linguistic knowledge and individual differences in speech segmentation: A collaboration with BogaertsLab, BE.EP.DD

Abstract

The main objective of this Direct Doctorate project is to investigate the role of statistical cues in language acquisition and the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying this process. The first steps towards achieving this objective were carried out throughout the Master's degree (FAPESP 2021/13731-0), with the conduction of a control experiment with the artificial languages that will be used in the present project and the integration of electrophysiological measurements to the task. Adult participants, Brazilian-Portuguese speakers will listen to artificial languages with different transitional and phonotactic probabilities. The first language - Balanced - has words and part-words (formed by the syllables on the borders of two words) with similar phonotactic probabilities, but with transitional probabilities that are stronger in words and weaker in part-words. If participants track only phonotactic probabilities, they will not have enough information to find the words of the language, but this will occur if they track transitional probabilities. The second language - Conflict - has words with lower phonotactic probabilities than part-words, but with stronger transitional probabilities than part-words. The conflict between phonotactic and transitional probabilities may direct participants' preference for words, as a function of transitional probability, or for part-words, as a function of phonotactic probability (cf. behavioral findings from our research group). The interaction of these statistical cues will be investigated using behavioral and electrophysiological measures. This project proposes two studies representing an important advance concerning the original Master's project. The first experiment investigates the perceptual change from syllables to words, analyzing the neural entrainment phenomenon and correlating this measure to behavioral performance in a segmentation test. The second study will investigate the difference in the amplitude of waves elicited by words, part-words, and non-words in the time windows corresponding to the N200 and P300 components, in addition to behavioral performance. The present project therefore innovates by allowing, for the first time, the analysis of electrophysiological data during a speech segmentation task with native Brazilian-Portuguese speakers and by offering a comparison between neural entrainment data, event-related potentials (ERPs ), and behavioral performance in response to languages with different statistical structures. (AU)