ABSTRACT
The role of working memory (WM) has been evidenced in language processing; however, the contribution of WM to the detection of linguistic deviance has remained unclear. This study aimed to examine how WM performance influences the detection of prosodic deviance in a fixed-stress language, which is supposed to be determined by a long-term word stress template. Therefore, Mismatch Negativity (MMN) event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a passive oddball paradigm containing pseudowords with two different stress patterns, legal and illegal. Besides, complex WM tasks (Counting span task, Verbal fluency tasks) were administered. Results revealed that greater WM performance measured by the Counting span task was associated with smaller MMN response for the legally-stressed stimuli but with larger MMN response for the illegally-stressed stimuli. Altogether, our ERP results suggest that WM has a general role in the processing of the native fixed word stress.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Ethical approval
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Data availability statement
Data will be made available on request.
Notes
1 The second time window is relatively late as compared with the time window where the MMN usually appears in the literature (150–250 ms; for review, see Näätänen et al., Citation2007). Therefore, the possibility that these ERP responses are negativities elicited by prediction errors (Friston, Citation2005) was considered. However, as described in the main text, considering (1) the EDN in the first time window, (2) previous literature, (3) and the amplitude distribution of these ERP responses, they likely reflect the MMN.