Schedule of Events | Symposia

Across- but Not Within-Category Speech Discrimination Is Associated with Individual Phonological Awareness

Poster Session F - Tuesday, April 1, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom
Also presenting in Data Blitz Session 3 - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm EDT, Constitution A.

Heesu Yun¹ (yun.he@northeastern.edu), Monique Montoute¹, Lauren Voso¹, Brynn Siles¹, Carlie Chukrallah¹, Tess Latham¹, Pradyumna Lanka¹, Frances Earle², Zhenghan Qi¹; ¹Northeastern University, ²University of Delaware

Phonological awareness, a foundational skill for language development, has been hypothesized to relate to speech-sound discrimination and its neural correlates. This study examines the relationship between electrophysiological markers, behavioral measures of phonological awareness, and speech discrimination performance in native English speakers (n = 30). Native English speakers completed the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP), which assesses phonological manipulation and synthesis skills through subtests such as Elision and Blending. Then, an auditory oddball task presented English consonant contrasts (/ba/and /ga/) to evaluate across- and within-category discrimination. EEG data were collected during the discrimination task using a 32-channel ActiChamp system. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were analyzed to extract mismatch negativity (MMN; 100–250ms) and late difference negativity (LDN; 300–550ms) components, focusing on group-level differences between native deviants and standard stimuli. Mass univariate analysis (MUA) identified electrodes showing significant ERP differences, controlling for multiple comparisons. Results revealed significant correlations between across-category discrimination and CTOPP scores. Specifically, MMN amplitudes for across-category stimuli correlated with Elision scores (r = -0.32), while LDN amplitudes demonstrated even stronger correlations with both Elision (r = -0.43) and Blending (r = -0.32). Interestingly, across- and within-category MMN were marginally correlated in a negative direction (r = -0.28). Within-category ERP components were not significantly associated with CTOPP scores. These findings suggest that phonological awareness is closely tied to neural markers of across-category discrimination, particularly LDN, while within-category discrimination appears less relevant. Greater sensitivity to speech categories may be related to reduced sensitivity to acoustic differences within categories.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Audition