Carsten Eulitz

University of Konstanz | Uni-Konstanz · Department of Linguistics

Semantic constituent access in compound processing

Animacy is an intrinsic semantic property of words referring to living things. A long line of evidence shows that words with animate referents require lower processing costs during word recognition than words with inanimate referents, leading among others to a decreased N400 amplitude in reaction to animate relative to inanimate objects. In the cur...

Heritage language bilingualism refers to contexts where a minority language spoken at home is (one of) the first native language(s) of an individual who grows up and typically becomes dominant in the societal majority language. Heritage language bilinguals often wind up with grammatical systems that differ in interesting ways from dominant-native s...

Idioms are a special case of multiword expressions in that their meaning cannotbe compositionally constructed from the meaning of the single constituents. Thepresent study examines whether the figurative meaning of an idiom is recognizedif critical idiomatic constituents (e.g. noun, verb, preposition) are modified. In three paraphrase experiments,...

In many languages, rhetorical questions (RQs) are produced with different prosodic realizations than string-identical information-seeking questions (ISQs). RQs typically have longer constituent durations and breathier voice quality than ISQs and differ in nuclear accent type. This paper reports on an identification experiment (Experiment 1) and an...

Idioms are a special case of multi-word expressions in that their meaning cannot be compositionally constructed from the meaning of the single constituents. The question of how the idiomatic meaning is assembled remains an unsettled issue in psycholinguistic research. The present study examines whether the figurative meaning of an idiom is recogniz...

In spoken language, reductions of word forms occur regularly and need to be accommodated by the listener. Intriguingly, this accommodation is usually achieved without any apparent effort. The neural bases of this cognitive skill are not yet fully understood. We here presented participants with reduced words that were either preceded by a related or...

German particle verbs consist of a base and a particle, two constituents which occupy separate positions in main clauses, but share one lexical entry. It is still unclear if the combination of particles and bases during sentence comprehension is lexical, syntactic or dual in nature. Using behavioural and ERP measurements, we investigated lexical ac...

In case-marking languages like German, nonstandard nominative-dative verbs lead to enhanced processing costs. So far, it is unclear if these case-marking effects reflect the special syntax or semantics of nominative-dative verbs. We present the results of two ERP experiments aimed to disentangle semantic and syntactic contributions to lexical case-...

A central issue in visual and spoken word recognition is the lexical representation of complex words—in particular, whether the lexical representation of complex words depends on semantic transparency: Is a complex verb like understand lexically represented as a whole word or via its base stand, given that its meaning is not transparent from the me...

Is morphosyntactic repair restricted to the violations of morphosyntax or can it also be triggered by rule-based phonological violations? To answer this question, we conducted an auditory ERP experiment that investigated the lexical retrieval of German verbs with morphological or rule-based phonological violations of the stem vowel. The non-violate...

The representation and processing of irregular stem allomorphs of German strong verbs were investigated in a series of auditory ERP experiments. The objective of the study was to determine whether present and past tense forms of strong verbs are stored in a morphologically underspecified manner. According to the morphological underspecification acc...

The processing of the German plural has been examined in a range of behavioral and neurophysi-ological studies. A number of studies so far showed differences between the processing of the default plural forms and the irregular plural form-(e)n. While previous studies focused on the examination of generally two plural categories (e.g.-(e)n versus-s)...

How much phonological detail of morphemes is stored in the mental lexicon? Do allomorphs derived by regular stem vowel alternations share one lexical entry or do they have separate entries (e.g., is the stem morpheme of sanity the same as sane). To answer this question we investigated the recognition process of morphologically complex words in Germ...

Multiple lexical representations overlapping with the input (cohort neighbors) are temporarily activated in the listener's mental lexicon when speech unfolds in time. Activation for cohort neighbors appears to rapidly decline as soon as there is mismatch with the input. However, it is a matter of debate whether or not they are completely excluded f...

The precise structure of speech sound representations is still a matter of debate. In the present neurobiological study, we compared predictions about differential sensitivity to speech contrasts between models that assume full specification of all phonological information in the mental lexicon with those assuming sparse representations (only contr...

The present study examines whether vowels embedded in complex stimuli may possess underspecified representations in the mental lexicon. The second goal was to assess the possible interference of the lexical status of stimuli under study. Minimal pairs of German nouns differing only in the stressed vowels [e], [ø], and [o], and derived pseudowords,...

Much work on morphological decomposition has been done in the field of priming and in word list experiments. The results are controversially discussed, the major criticism being that the methods used mostly ignore the fact that natural communication does not involve word lists, but requires a context that facilitates word recognition. In this talk,...

Perception of speech contrasts by adult second language (L2) speakers is for the most part influenced by experience acquired in the phonological system of their native language (L1). Thus, L2 speakers hardly differentiate between segments that are not contrastive in their own language. However, L2 learners seem to take advantage of pragmatic and sy...

The neural mechanisms underlying conversion disorders such as hysterical blindness are at present unknown. Typically, patients are diagnosed through exclusion of neurological disease and the absence of pathologic neurophysiological diagnostic findings. Here, we investigate the neural basis of this disorder by combining electrophysiological (event-r...

The lexical representation of words in Indo-European languages like English is generally assumed to be driven by meaning compositionality. This study examined the lexical representation of complex verbs in German, which is a morphologically rich representative of Indo-European languages. Three overt priming experiments manipulated prime-target rela...

In some languages, morphologically complex word forms may involve vowel alternations between front and back phonemes, as illustrated in the German noun Stock (Stocknot, vert, similarStöcke ‘sticknot, vert, similarsticks’) versus the non-alternating Stoff (Stoffnot, vert, similarStoffe ‘clothnot, vert, similarcloths’). This study was aimed to invest...

How does the brain repair obliterated speech and cope with acoustically ambivalent situations? A widely discussed possibility is to use top-down information for solving the ambiguity problem. In the case of speech, this may lead to a match of bottom-up sensory input with lexical expectations resulting in resonant states which are reflected in the i...

Languages such as Swedish use suprasegmental information such as tone, over and above segments, to mark lexical contrast. Theories differ with respect to the abstractness and specification of tone in the mental lexicon. In a forced choice task, we tested Swedish listeners' responses to words with segmentally identical first syllables differing in t...

Within linguistics, words with a complex internal structure are commonly assumed to be decomposed into their constituent morphemes (e.g., un-help-ful). Nevertheless, an ongoing debate concerns the brain structures that subserve this process. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the present study varied the internal complexity of derived wor...

As we age, our ability to select and to produce words changes, yet we know little about the underlying neural substrate of word-finding difficulties in old adults. This study was designed to elucidate changes in specific frontally mediated retrieval processes involved in word-finding difficulties associated with advanced age. We implemented two ove...

How does the mental lexicon cope with phonetic variants in recognition of spoken words? Using a lexical decision task with and without fragment priming, the authors compared the processing of German words and pseudowords that differed only in the place of articulation of the initial consonant (place). Across both experiments, event-related brain po...

So far, MMN studies of phonetic contrasts between speech sounds contrasted mainly place of articulation. Other phonetic features, particularly for vowels, have not been compared in a systematic fashion. The present study aimed at teasing apart MMN effects to phonetic contrasts by systematically manipulating two feature dimensions, place of articula...

The Mismatch Negativity (MMN) has been used among others to map language specific representations in the brain. This presentation will summarize MMN studies dealing with the processing of the sound structure of languages. The focus will be on studies investigating the fine structure of phonological representations in the mental lexicon. I will argu...

How is it that the human brain is capable of making sense from speech under many acoustically compromised conditions? The support through top-down knowledge is inevitable but can we identify brain measures of this matching process between degraded auditory input and possible meaning? To answer these questions, the present study investigated the mod...

Knowledge about the recovery of language functions in bilingual aphasic patients who suffer from left-hemispheric stroke is scarce. Here, we present the case of an early bilingual patient (German/French) with chronic aphasia. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate neural correlates of language performance during an ove...

A central issue in speech recognition is which basic units of speech are extracted by the auditory system and used for lexical access. One suggestion is that complex acoustic-phonetic information is mapped onto abstract phonological representations of speech and that a finite set of phonological features is used to guide speech perception. Previous...

The representation of phonological features in the mental lexicon has been examined using event-related brain responses, such as mismatch nega-tiveity (MMN; an automatic auditory change detection response in the brain) or the P350 com-ponent (a correlate of lexical activation). This pre-sentation will summarize some MMN studies that demonstrate sup...

Hintergrund: Ziel der vorliegenden Studie war, die Aachener Sprachanalyse (ASPA) als ein neues und viele Parameter umfassendes Spontansprachanalysesystem anhand der Testgütekriterien Objektivität, Reliabilität und Validität zu evaluieren. Methode: Die Spontansprache von 16 chronischen Aphasikern wurden zu drei Zeitpunkten (zweimal vor und einmal na...

The apparently effortless identification of speech is one of the human auditory cortex' finest and least understood functions. This is partly due to difficulties to tease apart effects of acoustic and phonetic attributes of speech sounds. Here we present evidence from magnetic source imaging that the auditory cortex represents speech sounds (such a...

We investigated the functional neuroanatomy of vowel processing. We compared attentive auditory perception of natural German vowels to perception of nonspeech band-passed noise stimuli using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). More specifically, the mapping in auditory cortex of first and second formants was considered, which spectrally c...

Aims: The Mismatch negativity (MMN) is an event-related potential (ERP) which provides an index of automatic context-dependent information processing and auditory sensory memory. MMN studies using traditional „oddball“ paradigms (e.g. 80% standards, 20% deviants) replicated deficits in preattentive information processing especially in schizophrenia...

If all available acoustic phonetic information of words is used during lexical access and consequently stored in the mental lexicon, then all pseudowords that deviate in a single acoustic feature from a word should hamper word recognition. By contrast, models assuming underspecification of redundant phonological information in the mental lexicon pr...

Dyslexia seems to be related to a lack of planum temporale (PT) asymmetry that is accompanied by functional differences to control subjects in both left and right hemispheric temporal regions during language tasks. PT asymmetry has been found to correlate with phonological and verbal skills. In accordance, reduced asymmetry of the auditory N100m so...

The present study used magnetic source imaging to examine gender differences in the functional hemispheric asymmetry of auditory processing. The auditory evoked N100m was examined in male and female subjects in response to natural syllables with varying consonant and vowel as well as nonspeech noise. In an additional task subjects had to categorize...

The speech signal contains both information about phonological features such as place of articulation and non-phonological features such as speaker identity. These are different aspects of the 'what'-processing stream (speaker vs. speech content), and here we show that they can be further segregated as they may occur in parallel but within differen...

A central issue in speech recognition is how contrastive phonemic information is stored in the mental lexicon. The conventional view assumes that this information is closely related to acoustic properties of speech. Considering that no word is ever pronounced alike twice and that the brain has limited capacities to manage information, an opposing v...

The present study examined the cortical activity during processing of vocalic segments by means of whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) to see whether respective cortical maps are stable across repeated measurements. We investigated the spatial configuration and temporal characteristics of the N100m generators of the auditory-evoked field during...

This study further elucidates determinants of vowel perception in the human auditory cortex. The vowel inventory of a given language can be classified on the basis of phonological features which are closely linked to acoustic properties. A cortical representation of speech sounds based on these phonological features might explain the surprisingly i...

This study demonstrates by means of magnetic source imaging how consonants and vowels that constitute a syllable differently affect the neural processing within the auditory cortex. We recently identified a topographically separate processing for mutually exclusive place features in isolated vowels (Obleser et al., in press). Does this mapping prin...

In various studies, deviances of hemispheric laterality in the organization of the perisylvian region in dyslexia have been suggested. Although associated with impaired language functioning, the clinical significance of atypical cerebral lateralization remains unclear. The present study examined interhemispheric source differences of magnetic respo...

To study the processing of vowels embedded in more complex linguistic structures, we compared cortical responses for pseudo-words. Auditory evoked potentials were recorded in 11 right-handed females using a passive oddball paradigm, with /pemu/ and /pomu/ as standard stimuli, differing only with respect to the first syllable. Topographic difference...

The current study aimed at determining whether the deviance of hemispheric asymmetry in the auditory cortex of children with dyslexia is also evident in dyslexic adults. Ten adult dyslexic subjects and 10 normally literate controls were presented with the syllable [ba:] while event-related brain activity was recorded from both hemispheres using who...

We studied neuromagnetic correlates of the processing of German vowels [a], [e] and [i]. The aim was (i) to show an influence of acoustic/phonetic features on timing and mapping of the N100 m component and (ii) to demonstrate the retest reliability of these parameters. To assess the spatial configuration of the N100 m generators, Euclidean distance...

Kinder mit spezifiseher Spraehbeeintraehti-gung (SSB) oder Dyslexie zeigen haufig Sehwierigkeiten in der Wahrnehmung van Stoppkonsonant-Vokal-Silben wie beispiels-weise Iba!, Ida! und Iga!. Elektrophysiologi-r sehe Befunde spreehen fur eine neuronale Verankerung dieser auf der Verhaltensebene beobaehteten phonematisehen Wahrneh-mungssehwaehe. Eine...

A number of findings indicate gender differences in language-related functional hemispheric brain asymmetry. To test if such gender-specific laterality is already present at the level of vowel-processing, the auditory evoked magnetic field was recorded in healthy right-handed male and female participants in response to the German synthetic vowels [...

A growing body of literature suggests that schizophrenic patients often do not show the normal brain hemispheric asymmetry. We have found this for simple tones presented to the right ear in a previous study. In this study we extended this investigation to left ear stimulation and verbal stimuli. With a whole-head neuromagnetometer, contra- and ipsi...

Developmental dyslexia has been associated with a deficit in temporal processing, but it is controversial whether the postulated deficit is pansensory or limited to the auditory modality. We present psychophysical assessment data of auditory and visual temporal processing abilities in children with dyslexia. While none of the dyslexic children disp...

Electrocortical correlates of language production were examined in two picture naming tasks that involved grapheme monitoring. In both tasks subjects (N=12) had to detect target letters in picture names, the target letter being positioned either at the beginning or at the end of the picture name. Between tasks, the target letter was shown either be...

Processing of hedonic stimulus quality is assumed to be accompanied by a tuning of cortical arousal and excitability. In this pilot study in 11 healthy humans scalp-recorded DC potentials were assessed during application of a sweet (sucrose) and bitter (quinine hydrochloride) taste, i.e., primary reinforcers of positive and negative quality. Muscul...

In various studies, deviances of hemispheric laterality in the organization of the perisylvian region in dyslexia have been suggested. Although associated with impaired language functioning, the clinical significance of atypical cerebral lateralization remains unclear. The present study examined interhemispheric source differences of magnetic respo...

The present study examined electroencephalographic (EEG) correlates of phonological encoding during picture naming with special emphasis on hemispheric asymmetries of these EEG correlates. We also examined whether a small set of stimuli was sufficient to study the phonological encoding, and to what extent the complexity of the produced message affe...

Evoked and induced magnetic brain activity measured over the left hemisphere were tested for their specificity to language-related processing. Induced activity refers to oscillatory alterations time locked but not phase locked to the stimulus. Words, false font stimuli, and two types of nonverbal patterns were presented visually while subjects perf...

Evoked and induced magnetic brain activity measured over the left hemisphere were tested for their specificity to language-related processing. Induced activity refers to oscillatory alterations time locked but not phase locked to the stimulus. Words, false font stimuli, and two types of nonverbal patterns were presented visually while subjects perf...

Neuroanatomical and -radiological studies have converged to suggest an atypical organisation in the temporal bank of the left-hemispheric Sylvian fissure for dyslexia. Against the background of this finding, we applied high temporal resolution magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate functional aspects of the left-hemispheric auditory cortex in...

Effects of anesthetics on electroencephalographic (EEG) activity are used to localize brain lesions as well as epileptogenic areas. Small doses of barbiturates (up to 200 mg) result in an increase of fast activity in the β-band of the EEG. This increase of β-band activity is known to be larger over normal brain areas as compared to areas with cereb...

The evaluation of brain rhythms has been used as an alternative method for quantifying functional changes in brain activity [1], [2], [3]. Recently it was applied successfully to the investigation of processes during speech perception and production [4], [5].

Die Darstellung von Hirnstrukturen, die in Sprachverarbeitung involviert sind, würde, insbesondere für klinische Bedürfnisse, von einer Meßmethode profitieren, die es erlaubt Sprachverarbeitung relativ unabhängig vom kognitiven Status der Patienten zu bewerten. Zu diesem Zweck wurden Hirnaktivierungsmuster während elementarer sprachverarbeitender P...

A reliable method for the clinically useful assessment of brain structures involved in language processing would be highly desirable. Ideally, the outcome of the diagnostic procedure would show negligible dependence on the current cognitive state of a patient. To approach this goal, we studied brain activational patterns during language processing...

Mobile phones emit a pulsed high-frequency electromagnetic field (PEMF) which may penetrate the scalp and the skull. Increasingly, there is an interest in the interaction of this pulsed microwave radiation with the human brain. Our investigations show that these electromagnetic fields alter distinct aspects of the brain's electrical response to aco...

The time course of the event related potentials evoked within a delayed matching to sample task employing verbal and pictorial stimuli was analyzed with a source reconstruction method (minimum norm method). During signal stimulus presentation pictorial stimuli evoked more activity than verbal stimuli. Activity was particularly prominent in left fro...

Theoretical considerations show that magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) provide different information about ongoing human brain activity. The paper presents simultaneously measured MEG and EEG data showing that these measures may lead to different conclusions about cognitive models under investigation. This was demonstrat...

Previous research has suggested that methohexital, a short-term barbiturate, alters activity in the primary epileptogenic area. It can be assumed that drug-induced activation of the epileptogenic focus provides a rapid and safe method to obtain a sufficient amount of information relevant for the lateralization and localisation of the primary epilep...

The auditory system derives the pitch of complex tones from the tone's harmonics. Research in psychoacoustics predicted that binaural fusion was an important feature of pitch processing. Based on neuromagnetic human data, the first neurophysiological confirmation of binaural fusion in hearing is presented. The centre of activation within the cortic...

Event-related oscillatory brain activity during language perception differs from activity occurring during the processing of comparable non-language stimuli. This fact became apparent in the observation of changes in the normalized spectral power of magnetoencephalographic (MEG) signals during the subject's processing of these stimuli. MEG was reco...