fisherpotsdamtalk

Julia FisherLinguistics DepartmentUniversity of Arizona

Auditory Masked Priming and Lexical Access in L1 and Early L2 English

Speakers with Differing Familial Handedness

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks go out to the following people and programs. Without them, this research would not have been possible.

Dr. Thomas G. BeverRoeland HancockDevon DaleNicholas DenisukMatthew GarciaKimberly GolischVanessa NguyenNSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program

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OUTLINE OF TALK

Research AimsThe Pilot Study

Familial HandednessAuditory Masked PrimingMethodsResults

The EEG StudySecond Language AcquisitionFamilial Handedness and Language AcquisitionCurrent Stage of the Work

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RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Larger Aim: Do L2 English speakers who began to learn English at different points within the critical period differ in their auditory lexical processing? Does this depend on their familial handedness?Smaller Aims:

Do right-handers with different family histories of left-handedness differ in isolated auditory lexical processing? If so, how?Kouider and Dupoux’s (2005) auditory masked priming paradigm has been shown to be sensitive to a variety of factors. We aim to further delineate the boundary parameters of the paradigm by asking whether or not it is sensitive to minor variations in timing.

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THE PILOT STUDY:Auditory Masked Priming and Lexical

Access in People with Differing Familial Handedness

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FAMILIAL HANDEDNESS

FAMILIAL HANDEDNESS

Definitions:

Left-Handed Familial/FS+ Individual: a right-handed person with at least one ambidextrous or left-handed blood relative, up to the level of grandparents

Right-Handed Familial/FS- Individual: a right-handed person with only right-handed blood relatives

A growing body of work has shown that there exist language processing and neurological differences between FS+ and FS- individuals.

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FAMILIAL HANDEDNESS

FS- individuals are ...more sensitive to the difference between main and subordinate clauses than FS+ individuals (Bever et al. 1989b; Cowart 1988)more sensitive to the differences between active and passive sentences than FS+ individuals (Carrithers 1988)faster at reading individual clauses than FS+ individuals (Bever et al. 1989a)more sensitive to word order than FS+ individuals (Townsend et al 2001)

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FAMILIAL HANDEDNESS

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Image taken from Bever et al. (1989a).

Response times to Probe Phrases Following Main and Subordinate Clauses

FAMILIAL HANDEDNESS

FS+ individuals are ...

faster at processing individual words than FS- individuals (Carrithers 1988)

faster than FS- individuals at tasks addressing conceptual information (Townsend et al. 2001)

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FAMILIAL HANDEDNESS

There is evidence that there are not only behavioral, but also neurological differences between FS+ and FS- individuals:

Luria (1947) found that FS+ individuals suffer from major aphasia less frequently and recover from such aphasia more quickly than FS- individuals when the left-hemisphere has been damaged.

Tzourio-Mazoyer et al. (2010) showed that FS+ right-handers with weak manual preference were non left-hemisphere dominant while listening to a story in their native language.

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FAMILIAL HANDEDNESS

Sammler et al. (2012) showed that FS+ individuals have a bilateral pattern of activation to both language and music, whereas FS- individuals have left-lateralization for language and right-lateralization for music.

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FAMILIAL HANDEDNESS

To summarize, past results indicate the following:FS- individuals are more sensitive to/better at processing grammatical structure than FS+ individualsFS+ individuals are more sensitive to/better at processing lexical and possibly conceptual information than FS- individuals.There are differences in the neurological organization of language of FS+ and FS- individuals.

Note: We will later discuss some other familial handedness differences related to the critical/sensitive period for language acquisition.

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FAMILIAL HANDEDNESS QUESTION

Many of the psycholinguistic studies that have looked at familial handedness-related differences have examined lexical access/processing in a syntactic context.

FS+ individuals are more efficient at lexical processing in such contexts.

Are FS+ individuals more efficient at isolated lexical processing?

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AUDITORYMASKED PRIMING

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AUDITORY MASKED PRIMING

Visual masked priming (Forster and Davis 1984): 27-year-old effective psycholinguistic tool Allows researchers to investigate lexical processing/access without subject awareness of primeThought to reflect automatic/subconscious processing


Why do we want an auditory analogue of Forster and Davis’s (1984) task?

To study languages without writing systemsTo study lexical processing in the absence of (overt) visual effectsTo study lexical processing in populations that cannot read or read with difficulty (children, older individuals who cannot read, people who are dyslexic)

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Kouider and Dupoux’s (2005) auditory masked priming task has three main components:

Prime: word/pseudoword, compressed, attenuated in volume

Target: word/pseudoword, uncompressed, normal volume

Masks: reversed words, compressed, attenuated in volume

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Image taken from Davis et al. (2010)

Target: learningPrime: soccer

Target: waorsihngPrime: waorsihng

AUDITORY MASKED PRIMING:PAST RESULTS

Kouider and Dupoux’s (2005) original study on French:

Repetition, morphological, semantic, and phonological priming at 35%, 40%, 50%, and 70% compressionThey also had subjects complete two prime-awareness tasks:

lexical decision on the primespeech decision on the prime

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AUDITORY MASKED PRIMING PAST RESULTS

Kouider and Dupoux (2005) continued:Word repetition priming at 35% compressionNonword repetition priming at 50% and 70%Semantic priming at 70% compressionMorphological priming at 50% and 70% compressionA d-prime analysis indicated that subjects were largely aware of the primes at 50% and 70% compression.

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Kouider and Dupoux (2005) continued:In addition to compression and priming type results, they found that repetition priming for words occurred independent of whether or not the prime and target were spoken in the same voice.

Ussishkin et al.’s (In prep) study on Maltese:Word repetition primingMorphological/form priming when primes and targets shared a consonantal root.No morphological/form priming when primes and targets shared a verbal binyan

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Ramus and Szenkovits’s (2008) study of French:Looked at normal and dyslexic individualsFound word repetition priming for both groups

Taft et al.’s (2008) study on English:Pilot studyat 50% compression of monosyllabic words, they failed to find repetition priming.

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Davis et al.’s study on English (2010):Synthetic stimuliHigh and low neighborhood density primesRepetition and phonological primingApproximately 35% compressionLooked at the auditory masked priming task, a prime awareness task (lexical decision on prime), and a compression task (subjects typed out compressed words)

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Davis et al. (2010) Results:Compression Task: Some words were much better identified at 35% compression than others. On average, participants correctly identified 80.2% of words.Prime Awareness Task: Subjects performed at chance level in lexical identification of the prime.Auditory Masked Priming Task: Low neighborhood density words experienced repetition priming. No other effects were significant.

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Schluter’s (In prep) work on English:Examined the difference between synthetic and natural English in the auditory masked priming taskSynthetic Speech:

Real words: repetition & rhyme priming; order of presentationNonwords: no priming; order of presentation

Natural Speech:Real words: repetition primingNonwords: repetition and rhyme priming

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Schluter (In prep) continued:Schluter’s (In prep) natural stimuli were about 120% the length of the synthetic stimuli.Could Schluter’s natural speech results be due to stimuli length differences? Schluter redid the natural speech study but first compressed all stimuli to 82% of their original duration in order to “equate” the lengths of the natural and synthetic stimuli.Stimuli were then processed as normal.No priming occurred.

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Study Type of Priming Examined

Compression

Other Factors Examined Key Results

Kouider and Dupoux (2005)

repetition, morphological,phonological,

semantic

35%40%50%70%

voice change between prime

and target

Word repetition priming at 35%; results at other compression levels tied

to prime audibility

Ussishkin et al. (In prep) repetition, 2 types of morphological 35% none

Word repetition priming; consonantal root

priming

Raums and Szenkovits (2008) repetition ? dyslexic vs. non-dyslexic

Word repetition priming for both groups

Davis et al. (2010) repetition, phonological 35% neighborhood

density

Only low neighborhood density word repetition

priming

Schluter (In prep) repetition, rhyme 35% synthetic vs. natural speech

Different results for two speech types; equating synthetic and natural lengths caused loss of

priming

Taft et al. (2008) repetition 50% none no priming (monosyllabic stimuli)

AUDITORY MASKED PRIMING SUMMARY

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The paradigm can (fairly) reliably produce word repetition priming at 35% compression.At higher compression, different results can be obtained, but subjects are more likely to be aware of the prime.The range of results, however, also indicate that the paradigm is sensitive to the following:

languagespeech typeneighborhood density

AUDITORY MASKED PRIMING QUESTION

Kouider and Dupoux’s (2005) paradigm is sensitive to a variety of factors. Is it also sensitive to variations in timing?

To address this, we align each target with the end of each stimulus.

This produces a variable amount of time between the end of the prime and the beginning of the target.

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AUDITORY MASKED PRIMING MODIFICATION

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THE CURRENT STUDY

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METHODS

Based on past results, we decided to only examine repetition priming.

We did include neighborhood density as a factor, hypothesizing that it would allow us to see possibly subtle differences between FS+ and FS- individuals.

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METHODS

Participants:71 native-English-speaking undergraduates at the University of Arizona34 men/37 women; mean age = 19.64 years

Tasks:Three computer tasks:

Auditory Masked Priming TaskPrime Awareness Task (lexical decision on primes)Compression Task (type out isolated primes)

Forms: Handedness questionnaireFamilial handedness questionnaireLanguage history and usage survey

METHODS

Lexical statistics were taken from the Irvine Phonotactic Online Dictionary (Vaden et al. 2009).Stimuli Stats:

240 targets; 120 words, 120 pseudowordsAll bisyllabicTarget raw frequency between 10 and 100 occurrences/millionPseudoword targets chosen to have unstressed, unweighted, word-average biphoneme, triphoneme, & positional probabilities at most one SD below respective means for real wordsHalf of targets low neighborhood density (1-3 neighbors); half high neighborhood density (10+ neighbors)Spoken lexical uniqueness point in rhyme of second syllable or immediately after final phone

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METHODS

Primes chosen with same statistics as targets.Prime-target pairs randomly chosen by Python script written by Julia Fisher. Semantic dissimilarity ensured by Julia Fisher.Stimuli were recorded by a female native English speaker from Tucson, AZ and Monterey, CA.Stimuli were normed in intensity before processing to 70 dB.Auditory masked priming stimuli were created using a script written by Scott Jackson and Dan Brenner and modified by Julia Fisher for PRAAT (Boersma 2001). Presentation of stimuli was done using the Psychophysics Toolbox extensions for Matlab (Brainard 1997; Pelli 1997; Kleiner et al. 2007).

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RESULTS

Only right-handed subjects were included in analyses. This was determined by strength of hand preference for writing and throwing and strength of foot preference for kicking.

Subjects with experimental glitches and who did not get a score of at least 80% in the main task were also not analyzed.

Subjects were determined to be FS+ or FS- based on the familial handedness questionnaire. At least one left-handed or ambidextrous blood relative up to the level of grandparents classified them as FS+.

This left 58 subjects:

30 women: 19 FS+/11 FS-

28 men: 12 FS+/16 FS-

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RESULTS

Reaction times were measured from the beginning of each target.

Reaction times were cut to 2 standard deviations from the mean per subject.

Reaction times were transformed using the natural logarithm in order to better approximate a normal distribution and satisfy homogeneity of variance.

Words and pseudowords were analyzed separately.

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RESULTS

Mixed ANOVA using the following factors:Familial handedness: FS+/FS-Gender: female/maleNeighborhood density: low/highPrime type: repetition/unrelatedFrequency (only used in word analysis): low/highLexical uniqueness point: during/following targetCounterbalanced group: two levels

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WORD RESULTS

Significant interaction among all factors except counterbalanced group (F1(1,50) = 5.11, p < 0.05; F2(1,104) = 5.51, p < 0.05).We split data by familial handedness.FS+ Data:

Main effect of prime type (F1(1,27) = 26.38, p < 0.001; F2(1,104) = 24.84, p < 0.001)Interaction among frequency, lexical uniqueness point, and gender (F1(1,27) = 4.83, p < 0.05; F2(1,104) = 5.02, p < 0.05)This last interaction showed no significant sub-effects.

FS+ subjects experienced on average 29 ms of word repetition priming.

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WORD RESULTS

FS- subjects:Main effect of prime type (F1(1,23) = 13.80, p < 0.01; F2(1,104) = 12.47, p < 0.001)Marginally significant interaction between prime type and frequency (F1(1,23) = 6.51, p < 0.05; F2(1,104) = 3.76, p = 0.055).The interaction revealed an effect of prime type for high frequency targets (F1(1,25) = 14.86, p < 0.001; F2(1,58) = 8.51, p < 0.01) but not for low (p > 0.05).

Thus, FS- subjects only experienced priming for high frequency targets.

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WORD RESULTS

Error bars represent one standard deviation above and below the mean.

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WORD RESULTS

We further examined the apparent result that FS+ individuals have greater priming than FS- individuals for low frequency targets by calculating a priming score per subject and running an anova with factors familial handedness and counterbalanced group.

The difference in priming was marginal (F1(1,54) = 3.28, p = 0.076; F2(1,58) = 3.19, p = 0.079).

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WORD RESULTS

There was no interaction between

priming and neighborhood

density, unlike in Davis et al. (2010).

Error bars represent one standard deviation above and below the mean.

RESULTS SUMMARY:FAMILIAL HANDEDNESS

FS+ and FS- individuals DO differ in isolated lexical processing. Specifically, FS+ individuals experience priming for both low and high frequency targets. FS- individuals only experience priming for low frequency targets.

This indicates that only FS+ individuals were able to process low frequency primes to the point where they facilitated target access.

This supports prior results indicating that FS+ individuals are more efficient at lexical processing.

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Even with the variation in timing between the end of primes and the start of targets, the auditory masked priming paradigm produced repetition priming for words and none for pseudowords.In contrast to Davis et al. (2010), we did not find differences in priming between low and high neighborhood density targets.

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RESULTS SUMMARY:AUDITORY MASKED PRIMING

The lack of difference between neighborhood density groups could be due to a variety of factors:

Synthetic stimuli might not capture all the information present in natural stimuli, making it harder to process stimuli that have many neighbors. Davis et al. (2010) used mono- to tri-syllabic stimuli. We used bisyllabic stimuli. It could be that they had proportionally more monosyllabic stimuli than multisyllabic stimuli and thus our stimuli had more opportunities for phonotactics to play a positive role in processing (see Vitevitch et al. 1999).

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RESULTS SUMMARY:AUDITORY MASKED PRIMING

RESULTS SUMMARY: AUDITORY MASKED PRIMING

Given now that auditory masked priming can give differing results based on language, speech type, possibly number of syllables in stimuli, and sometimes neighborhood density, it could be that the paradigm will be useful not just to investigate auditory lexical processing but also sublexical processing.

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PRIME AWARENESS & COMPRESSION RESULTS

Prime Awareness: Each subject’s responses were analyzed using a Pearson’s Chi-squared test. For 53/59 subjects, results showed that they were not aware of the primes (all p > 0.05).

Compression:

On average, each subject identified 77% (SD 7%) of compressed words correctly. Only 7/59 subjects averaged under 70%. Their average was 63% (SD 5%).

On average, each word was identified by 77% of subjects (SD 29%). 72/240 items were poorly-identified (average 39%, SD 22%).

30 of the poorly-identified items were low N.

42 of the poorly-identified items were high N.

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THE EEG STUDY

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L2 ACQUISITION

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Johnson and Newport (1989) examined...

whether or not the learning of an L2 grammar is affected by age of acquisition

the exact nature of the relationship between L2 grammatical proficiency and age of acquisition

Their task: grammaticality judgments to auditorily-presented sentences covering twelve types of English grammatical rules

L2 ACQUISITION

Johnson and Newport (1989) found the following:The earlier a participant arrived in the US, the better (s)he did on the grammaticality judgment task. Subjects who came to the US before age 8 were indistinguishable from native English speakers.Early arrival participants’ scores correlated negatively with age of arrival. Late arrival participants’ scores did not.

Thus, like for first language acquisition, there exists a critical/sensitive period for second language acquisition.

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NEUROLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT DURING THE CRITICAL PERIOD

Friederici (2009) points out that the neural pathway between Broca’s Area and the Superior Temporal Gyrus appears to play a role in syntactic processing.

She also provides evidence that this pathway is not fully developed in children even by the age of seven.

Thus, it is possible, given how long some language-related neural structures take to mature, that children who learn a second language a different points before age eight will show subtly-different neural processing signatures.

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FAMILIAL HANDEDNESS AND SIGN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Ross and Bever (2004) examined the time-course of language acquisition in deaf FS+ and FS- individuals.Participants:

students at the National Technical Institute for the Deafaged 18-507+ years of sign language experiencecause of deaf most likely genetic; definitely not due to illness

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Ross and Bever (2004): Scores on Sign Language Placement Interview (SIPI), a test used to determine ASL proficiency, did not differ by familial handedness for individuals who acquired a sign language between ages 0 and 7.For FS+ individuals, the mean SIPI score for 0-7 age of acquisition range was significantly higher than the mean score for 8+ age of acquisition range.For FS- individuals, the mean SIPI score for the two age of acquisition ranges did not differ.

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Ross and Bever (2004) acknowledge that years of experience signing and age of acquisition are difficult to separate in the study. However, because previous studies have indicated that age of acquisition has a greater effect on ASL proficiency that years of experience, they do not consider years of experience to be a serious confound.Their results suggest that FS+ individuals have a shorter critical/sensitive period than FS- individuals.

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Ross and Bever (2004) suggest that the difference in critical period may tie into the past results on FS+/FS- strengths:

Lexical growth occurs early in childhood. For FS+ children, this natural growth matches their more efficient processing mechanism (lexical processing). Thus, they may acquire language more quickly.For FS- children, early lexical growth does not match their more efficient processing mechanism (syntactic processing). Thus, they may experience a slower rate of language acquisition.

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RESEARCH QUESTION

Since the brain is developing throughout the critical period, are there small but noticeable differences in the language processing of L2 speakers who acquired their L2 at different points within the critical period? Is this

difference modulated by familial handedness?

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RESEARCH PLAN & PROGRESS

We will examine neural correlates (EEG) of auditory lexical processing (using auditory masked priming) in three groups of speakers:

native English speakersnative Spanish speakers who acquired English before age 4native Spanish speakers who acquired English between ages 4 and 8

We will control for familial handedness.We are currently in the process of collecting EEG data from native English speakers.

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THANK YOU!

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REFERENCESBever, T.G., C. Carrithers, W. Cowart, and D.J. Townsend. 1989a. Language processing and familial

handedness. In: Galaburda, Al., Editor., 1989. From neurons to reading, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. 331-360.

Bever, T.G., C. Carrithers, and D. Townsend. 1989b. Sensitivity to clause structure as a function of familial handedness. University of Rochester, Cognitive Sciences Technical Report no. 43.

Boersma, P. 2001. “Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer”, GLOT. 5. 341-345.Carrithers, C. 1988. Canonical sentences structure and psych-ergative verbs. Journal of Psycholinguist

Research.Cowart, W. 1988. Familial sinistrality and syntactic processing. In J.M. Williams and C.J. Long, eds.

Cognitive approaches to neuropsychology. 273-286. New York: Plenum.Davis, C., J. Kim, and A. Barbaro. 2010. Masked speech priming: Neighborhood size matters (L). Journal

of the Acoustical Society of America. 127. 2110-2113.Forster, L, and C. Davis. 1984. Repetition priming and frequency attenuation in lexical access. Journal of

Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 10. 680-698.Johnson, J. S. and E. L. Newport. 1989. Critical Period Effects in Second Language Learning: The

Influence of Maturational State on the Acquisition of English as a Second Language. Cognitive Psychology. 21. 60-99.

Kouider, S. and E. Dupoux. 2005. Subliminal Speech Priming. Psychological Science. 16. 617-625.Luria, A.R. 1947. Traumatic aphasia: Its syndrome, psychopathology, and treatment (Russian). Moscow:

Academy of Medical Sciences. Translation, The Hague: Mouton, 1970.

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Oldfield, R.C. 1971. The Assessment and Analysis of Handedness: The Edinburgh Inventory. Neuropsychologia. 9. 97-113.

Ramus, F. and G. Szenkovits. 2008. What phonological deficit? The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 61. 129-141.

Ross, D.S. and T.G. Bever. 2004. The time course for language acquisition in biologically distinct populations: Evidence from deaf individuals. Brain & Language. 89. 115-121.

Schluter, K. In prep. Sorry, Crystal, I think we should start hearing other people: The non-equivalence of synthetic and natural speech in subliminal speech priming. Ms., University of Arizona.

Taft, M., A. Castles, C. Davis, G. Lazendic, and M. Nguyen-Hoan. 2008. Automatic activation of orthography in spoken word recognition: Pseudohomograph priming. Journal of Memory and Language. 58. 366-379.

Sammler, D., A.D. Friederici, R. Hancock, R. Bianco, and T.G. Bever. 2012. Genetic factors in the cerebral asymmetries for language and music. Presented at the 2012 Neurobiology of Language Conference. October 25-27. San Sebastian, Spain.

Townsend, D.J., C. Carrithers, and T.G. Bever. 2001. Familial Handedness and Access to Words, Meaning, and Syntax during Sentence Comprehension. Brain and Language. 78. 308-331.

Ussishkin, A., A. Wedel, K. Schluter, and C. Dawson. In prep. Overcoming the Orthographic Confound in Semitic: Supraliminal and Subliminal Root and Pattern Priming in Maltese. Ms., University of Arizona.

Vitevich, M., P. Luce, D. Pisoni, & E. Auer. 1999. Phonotactics, Neighborhood Activation, and Lexical Access for Spoken Words. Brain and Language. 68. 306-311.

REFERENCES

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