Distinct ERP profiles for learning rules over vowels and consonants

Distinct ERP profiles for learning rules over vowels and consonants

Júlia Monte-Ordoño1 and Juan M. Toro1,2

1. Center for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

2. ICREA

The Consonant-Vowel hypothesis suggests that consonants and vowels carry different information during language learning. Consonants provide more information for lexical access, while vowels carry prosodic information. In this study we explored whether these functional differences triggered different neural responses in an abstract rule learning task. We recorded Event Related Potentials (ERP) while nonsense words were presented in an oddball paradigm. Standard stimuli had an ABB rule, Phoneme Deviants followed the same structure as standards, and Rule Deviants followed an ABA rule. In the Vowel condition, the rules were implemented over the vowels (ABB rule: fufefe; ABA rule: fufefu). In the Consonant condition rules were implemented over the consonants (ABB rule: lomomo; ABA rule: lomolo). The results showed that there was a different ERP distribution for the Consonant and Vowel condition. When the rules were implemented over the vowels a frontal negative component was triggered around 400 ms after the Rule Deviant stimuli. In contrast, in the Consonant condition, we observed a posterior N400 component after the presentation of the Phoneme Deviant stimuli. The results suggest that consonants and vowels have dissociable roles during language processing and add further evidence to the division of labor proposed by Nespor et al. (2005).