Attention modulates somatosensory influences in passive speech listening

ABSTRACT

Previous studies showed that manipulating the speech production system influenced speech perception. This influence was mediated by task difficulty, listening conditions, and attention. In the present study we investigated the specificity of a somatosensory manipulation – a spoon over the tongue – in passive listening. We measured the mismatch negativity (MMN) while participants listened to vowels that differ in their articulation – the tongue height – and familiarity – native and unknown vowels. The same participants heard the vowels in a spoon and no-spoon block. The order of the blocks was counterbalanced across participants. Results showed no effect of the spoon. Instead, starting with the spoon enhanced the MMN amplitude. A second experiment showed the same MMN enhancement for starting with a somatosensory manipulation applied to a non-articulator – the hand. This result suggests that starting a study with a somatosensory manipulation raises attention to the task.

KEYWORDS:

• Speech perception
• speech production
• speech processing
• event-related potentials
• mismatch negativity

Acknowledgements

We thank Robert Frank de Menezes for help with the data acquisition and Mathilde Fort, Miguel Burgaleta and Pamela Miller for their helpful comments on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) ERC grant (UNDER CONTROL) [grant agreement number 323961] and (FP7/SSH-2013-1) collaborative project (AThEME) [grant agreement number 613465]; the Spanish Ministerio de Economa y Competitividad (PSI2012-34071) and the Catalan Government (SGR 2014-1210) awarded to NSG. She also received the ICREA Academia prize for excellence in research, funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya. BD received funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) [REA grant agreement number 32867] and a postdoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Government (Juan de la Cierva fellowship) [grant number JCI-2012-12678].