1 Centre for Research on Brain, Language, and Music, 3640 de la Montagne, Montreal, QC H3G 2A8, Canada; School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, 2001 McGill College, 8th Floor, Montreal, QC H3A 1G1, Canada. Electronic address: annie.c.gilbert@mail.mcgill.ca.
2 Centre for Research on Brain, Language, and Music, 3640 de la Montagne, Montreal, QC H3G 2A8, Canada; School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, 2001 McGill College, 8th Floor, Montreal, QC H3A 1G1, Canada. Electronic address: claire.honda@mail.mcgill.ca.
3 Centre for Research on Brain, Language, and Music, 3640 de la Montagne, Montreal, QC H3G 2A8, Canada; Department of Psychology, Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke West, Montreal, QC H4B 1R6, Canada. Electronic address: natalie.phillips@concordia.ca.
4 Centre for Research on Brain, Language, and Music, 3640 de la Montagne, Montreal, QC H3G 2A8, Canada; School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, 2001 McGill College, 8th Floor, Montreal, QC H3A 1G1, Canada. Electronic address: shari.baum@mcgill.ca.

Near native-like stress pattern perception in English-French bilinguals as indexed by the mismatch negativity.

Brain Lang. 2020 Dec 14; 213:104892

Authors: Gilbert AC, Honda CT, Phillips NA, Baum SR

Abstract

We examined lexical stress processing in English-French bilinguals. Auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) responses were recorded in response to English and French pseudowords, whose primary stress occurred either on a language-consistent "usual" or language-inconsistent "unusual" syllable. In most conditions, the pseudowords elicited two consecutive MMNs, and somewhat surprisingly, these MMNs were not systematically modulated by bilingual experience. This suggests that it is possible to achieve native-like pre-attentive processing of lexical stress, even in a language that one has not learned since birth.

PMID: 33333337 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]