Neural correlates of linguistic collocations during continuous speech perception

Armine Garibyan; Achim Schilling; Claudia Boehm; Alexandra Zankl; Patrick Krauss

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1076339

Neural correlates of linguistic collocations during continuous speech perception

Front Psychol. 2022 Dec 23:13:1076339. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1076339. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Armine Garibyan^{1

2}, Achim Schilling^{3

4}, Claudia Boehm^{2

3

4}, Alexandra Zankl^{2

3

4}, Patrick Krauss^{2

3

4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Chair of English Philology and Linguistics, University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany.
² Linguistics Lab, University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany.
³ Neuroscience Lab, University Hospital Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany.
⁴ Cognitive Computational Neuroscience Group, University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany.
⁵ Pattern Recognition Lab, University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany.

Abstract

Language is fundamentally predictable, both on a higher schematic level as well as low-level lexical items. Regarding predictability on a lexical level, collocations are frequent co-occurrences of words that are often characterized by high strength of association. So far, psycho- and neurolinguistic studies have mostly employed highly artificial experimental paradigms in the investigation of collocations by focusing on the processing of single words or isolated sentences. In contrast, here we analyze EEG brain responses recorded during stimulation with continuous speech, i.e., audio books. We find that the N400 response to collocations is significantly different from that of non-collocations, whereas the effect varies with respect to cortical region (anterior/posterior) and laterality (left/right). Our results are in line with studies using continuous speech, and they mostly contradict those using artificial paradigms and stimuli. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first neurolinguistic study on collocations using continuous speech stimulation.

Keywords: cognitive computational neuroscience; collocations; electroencephalography; event related potentials; natural language processing; naturalistic continuous speech; neurobiology of language; neurolinguistics.