Poster D46, Wednesday, August 21, 2019, 5:15 – 7:00 pm, Restaurant Hall
Gender differences in the neural processing of pitch focus
Katharina Spalek1, Yulia Oganian2, Xaver Koch1;1Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2University of California San Francisco
Linguistic focus signals that alternatives to the focused element are relevant for the interpretation of an utterance. The sentence: “The SNL meeting 2019 takes place in [HELSINKI]F.”, with pitch focus accent on ‘Helsinki’, expresses the literal content of the sentence, but also implies that the meeting does not take place in Québec City or London. {Helsinki, Québec City, London, ...} are focus alternatives. While focus alternatives may come from the same semantic category as the focused element, this is not a requirement. Neurally, we previously found effects of pitch focus on alternative processing in a discourse-integration network, including the precuneus and the fronto-median wall, distinct from semantic priming effects in bilateral temporal lobes. Processing focus and its alternatives belongs to the field of pragmatics, an area where individuals have been found to differ to a large extent. In two studies, we investigated potential differences between the sexes during focus processing. Study 1 tested whether focus makes alternatives more salient and therefore aids memory for alternatives. Participants (n = 94, 47 female) listened to short narratives in which three items were mentioned (e.g., ‘shirts’, ‘socks’, and ‘jumpers’). The next sentence discussed one of these items again (e.g., ‘socks’), either with focus accent or without. Alternatives (here: ‘shirts’, ‘jumpers’) to the latter item were recalled better in a subsequent memory test if this item had been marked with a focus accent than if it had been unmarked. However, this memory benefit only occurred in women, not in men. In study 2, we used fMRI to test how this difference is reflected in neural processing of focus alternatives. Participants (n = 38, 19 female) listened to spoken sentences (e.g., “Angela put the coke in the fridge.”), followed by a written target word. Targets were either semantically unrelated to the sentence (e.g., “book”, UNR), or semantically related (e.g., “lemonade”). Semantically related items were either alternatives (relA) to the focused element of the sentence (e.g., “Angela put [the COKE]F in the fridge.” or not (relN, e.g., “[ANGELA]F put the coke in the fridge.”, where the alternative set consists of individuals). We expected semantic priming (related-unrelated) in bilateral temporal areas independently of gender, whereas focus alternatives processing (relA – relN) was predicted to differ between the sexes. The semantic priming contrast activated the superior temporal gyri in women. In contrast, in men only the relA condition showed semantic priming in these areas. The focus alternative contrast showed effects in areas associated with coherence processing (left SFG and precuneus) in women, whereas men showed semantic priming (unr < rel) in these areas. Finally, in men, activation patterns in left IFG and lingual gyrus reflected task difficulty whereas no significant differences between the conditions were found in women. To summarize: In women, semantic priming and focus alternative processing activate distinct networks, whereas both networks show semantic priming effects in men, convergent with their lack of a memory benefit for focus alternatives. Our results demonstrate the importance of individual differences for models of language and discourse comprehension.
Themes: Meaning: Discourse and Pragmatics, Speech Perception
Method: Functional Imaging