Language specificity in cortical tracking of speech rhythm at the mora, syllable, and foot levels.

ABSTRACT: Recent research shows that adults' neural oscillations track the rhythm of the speech signal. However, the extent to which this tracking is driven by the acoustics of the signal, or by language-specific processing remains unknown. Here adult native listeners of three rhythmically different languages (English, French, Japanese) were compared on their cortical tracking of speech envelopes synthesized in their three native languages, which allowed for coding at each of the three language's dominant rhythmic unit, respectively the foot (2.5 Hz), syllable (5 Hz), or mora (10 Hz) level. The three language groups were also tested with a sequence in a non-native language, Polish, and a non-speech vocoded equivalent, to investigate possible differential speech/nonspeech processing. The results firs

SUBMITTER: Peter V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9356059 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature