ABSTRACT Rhythm is a powerful way to shape the processing of complex sounds such as speech or music by generating temporal expectancies in the listener. Here, we investigated if multisensory expectancies generated by aligning speech and motor rhythms may enhance verbal processing. Participants listened to rhythmically regular German sentences and detected word changes occurring on stressed or unstressed syllables. Participants were cued to produce finger taps simultaneously with the auditory speech rhythm. Finger taps were aligned or misaligned with stressed syllables. Detection of word changes was facilitated when manual movements were temporally aligned with the auditory speech rhythm. Moreover, motor alignment enhanced sensitivity to detect changes on stressed syllables compared to a perceptual control condition. Thus, rhythmic speech structure reinforced by concurrent movement in multisensory contexts has beneficial effects on verbal processing. This finding lends support to models of expectancy-driven speech processing.
It is better when expected: aligning speech and motor rhythms enhances verbal processing
Published 2016 in Language, Cognition and Neuroscience
ABSTRACT
PUBLICATION RECORD
- Publication year
2016
- Venue
Language, Cognition and Neuroscience
- Publication date
2016-04-04
- Fields of study
Psychology
- Identifiers
- External record
- Source metadata
Semantic Scholar
CITATION MAP
EXTRACTION MAP
CLAIMS
CONCEPTS
- auditory speech rhythm
The regular temporal pattern of the spoken sentences that served as the auditory timing signal.
Aliases: speech rhythm
- concurrent movement
Motor activity produced at the same time as listening to the speech stimuli.
Aliases: simultaneous movement
- finger taps
Rhythmic index-finger movements participants were cued to produce in synchrony with the speech rhythm.
Aliases: manual movements, taps
- motor alignment
The degree to which produced finger taps coincided in time with stressed syllables in the speech stream.
Aliases: aligned movement, temporal alignment
- multisensory expectancies
Timing-based predictions formed from coordinating auditory speech and motor activity across modalities.
Aliases: cross-modal expectancies
- perceptual control condition
A comparison condition used to assess performance without the same movement-based timing alignment.
Aliases: control condition
- rhythmic speech structure
The organized temporal pattern of the spoken sentences that supports regular expectancy formation.
Aliases: rhythmic sentence structure
- stressed syllables
Syllables in the sentences that carried lexical stress and provided temporal anchor points in the rhythm.
Aliases: stressed beats
- verbal processing
The processing of spoken sentence material for detecting changes in words and syllables.
Aliases: speech processing
- word changes
Target alterations in the sentence content that participants attempted to detect.
Aliases: word change detection targets
REFERENCES
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