Feeling better: Tactile verbs speed up tactile detection.

Embodiment of action-related language into the motor system has been extensively documented. Yet the case of sensory words, especially referring to touch, remains overlooked. We investigated the influence of verbs denoting tactile sensations on tactile perception. In Experiment 1, participants detected tactile stimulations on their forearm, preceded by tactile or non-tactile verbs by one of three delays (170, 350, 500 ms) reflecting different word processing stages. Results revealed shorter reaction times to tactile stimulations following tactile than non-tactile verbs, irrespective of delay. To ensure that priming pertained to tactile, and not motor, verb properties, Experiment 2 compared the impact of tactile verbs to both action and non-tactile verbs, while stimulations were delivered on the index finger. No priming emerged following action verbs, therefore not supporting the motor-grounded interpretation. Facilitation by tactile verbs was however not observed, possibly owing to methodological changes. Experiment 3, identical to Experiment 2 except that stimulation was delivered to participants' forearm, replicated the priming effect. Importantly, tactile stimulations were detected faster after tactile than after both non-tactile and action verbs, indicating that verbs' tactile properties engaged resources shared with sensory perception. Our findings suggest that language conveying tactile information can activate somatosensory representations and subsequently promote tactile detection.

Syllable duration changes during babbling: a longitudinal study of French infant productions.

At the babbling stage, the syllable does not have the temporal characteristics of adult syllables because of the infant's limited oro-motor skills. This research aims to further our knowledge of syllable duration and temporal variability and their evolution with age as an indicator of the development of articulatory skills. The possible impact of syllable position, as well as that of type of intrasyllabic associations and intersyllabic articulatory changes on these parameters has also been tested. Oral productions of 22 French infants were recorded monthly from 8 to 14 months. 11 261 Consonant-Vowel (CV) syllables were annotated and temporally analyzed. The mean duration varied according to syllable position, but not to the intrasyllabic or intersyllabic articulatory changes. Moreover, the syllable duration decreased significantly from the age of 10 months onwards, whereas the temporal variability remained the same.

Regular rhythmic primes boost P600 in grammatical error processing in dyslexic adults and matched controls.

Regular musical rhythms orient attention over time and facilitate processing. Previous research has shown that regular rhythmic stimulation benefits subsequent syntax processing in children with dyslexia and specific language impairment. The present EEG study examined the influence of a rhythmic musical prime on the P600 late evoked-potential, associated with grammatical error detection for dyslexic adults and matched controls. Participants listened to regular or irregular rhythmic prime sequences followed by grammatically correct and incorrect sentences. They were required to perform grammaticality judgments for each auditorily presented sentence while EEG was recorded. In addition, tasks on syntax violation detection as well as rhythm perception and production were administered. For both participant groups, ungrammatical sentences evoked a P600 in comparison to grammatical sentences and its mean amplitude was larger after regular than irregular primes. Peak analyses of the P600 difference wave confirmed larger peak amplitudes after regular primes for both groups. They also revealed overall a later peak for dyslexic participants, particularly at posterior sites, compared to controls. Results extend rhythmic priming effects on language processing to underlying electrophysiological correlates of morpho-syntactic violation detection in dyslexic adults and matched controls. These findings are interpreted in the theoretical framework of the Dynamic Attending Theory (Jones, 1976, 2019) and the Temporal Sampling Framework for developmental disorders (Goswami, 2011).

A combined forced-attention dichotic listening - Go/Nogo task to assess response inhibition and interference suppression: An auditory event-related potential investigation.

OBJECTIVE: Interference suppression and response inhibition are distinct effortful inhibitory processes. Yet they rely on partly overlapping neural substrates. Their independence was studied using an auditory paradigm. METHOD: Continuous EEG was recorded in 16 adults and event-related potentials (ERPs) were analyzed in a new dichotic listening - Go/Nogo task. Attention was directed either to the right dominant ear (forced-right blocks [FR]) or to the left ear (forced-left blocks [FL]). The Go/Nogo task required a motor response only to the standard word played to the selected ear; the nonselected ear was simultaneously presented with the same word (Go condition) or with a deviant (Incongruent Go condition). In the Nogo condition, a deviant was presented to the selected ear while the standard was played to the nonselected ear. Effortful interference suppression was expected only in the FL blocks to override the automatic processing of distractors in the dominant ear. RESULTS: When no effortful interference suppression was necessary (FR blocks) in the Nogo condition, the N2 and P3 increase probably reflected two subcomponents of response inhibition (response restraint and response cancellation) and the P2 decrease probably reflected an early inhibitory mechanism (sensory gating). When effortful interference suppression was necessary (FL blocks), there was no Nogo-N2 (i.e., no response restraint). Interference suppression (Incongruent Go condition minus Go condition) also increased the N2 and P3, but did not modulate the P2. CONCLUSIONS: This new paradigm confirms the partial overlap between response inhibition and effortful interference suppression and points out specific features of their subcomponents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).