Working memory contributes to word stress processing in a fixed-stress language

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.

KEYWORDS:

• AERS model
• MMN
• word stress processing
• working memory

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., 2007). Therefore, the possibility that these ERP responses are negativities elicited by prediction errors (Friston, 2005) 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.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund [grant numbers OTKA K 119365, PI: V. Cs.; OTKA FK 124412, PI: A. K.], The Postdoctoral Fellowship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (to A. K.), and the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences [BO/00273/17 – F. H., BO/00075/19 – A. K.].