Early neural encoding of pitch drives cue weighting during speech perception.

ABSTRACT: Linguistic categories are conveyed in speech by several acoustic cues simultaneously, so listeners need to decide how to prioritize different potential sources of information. There are robust, replicable individual differences in how cues are weighted during speech perception, but the underlying mechanisms explaining this variability remain unclear. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the reliability of early auditory encoding of a dimension is linked to the weighting placed on that dimension during speech categorization. This hypothesis was tested in 60 first language speakers of Mandarin-learning English as a second language. Neural tracking of changes in the pitch contour of naturalistic speech was assessed using EEG, while speech cue weighting was behaviorally tested using word emphas

SUBMITTER: Kachlicka M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12776616 | biostudies-literature | 2026

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature