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Even when speakers are not actively doing another task, they can be interfered in their speech planning by concurrent auditory stimuli. In this study, we used picture naming with passive hearing, or active listening, combined to high-density electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings to investigate the locus and origin of interference on speech production. Participants named pictures while ignoring (or paying attention to) auditory syllables presented at different intervals (+150 ms, +300 ms or +450 ms). Interference of passive hearing was observed at all positive stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) including when distractors appeared 450 ms after picture onset. Analyses of ERPs and microstates revealed modulations appearing in a time-window close to verbal response onset likely relating to post-lexical planning processes. A shift of latency of the N1 auditory component for syllables displayed 450 ms after picture onset relative to hearing in isolation was also observed. Data from picture naming with active listening to auditory syllables also pointed to post-lexical interference. The present study suggests that, beyond the lexical stage, post-lexical processes can be interfered and that the reciprocal interference between utterance planning and hearing relies on attentional demand and possibly competing neural substrates.

An adult continues acquiring new lexical entries in everyday life. Brain networks and processes at play when producing newly learnt words might be similar to well-known words, yet some processes are bound to be slower. Here, we compared the neural dynamics of producing newly acquired words with those of well-known frequent words, both qualitatively and quantitatively, using event-related potentials (ERPs) associated to high-density microstate analyses. ERPs revealed several temporal windows with differences in waveform amplitudes, which correspond to enhanced duration of similar microstates for newly acquired words compared to well-known words. The time-periods of these ERP modulations converged to suggest that both lexical processes and word form encoding are slowed down for words that have been learned recently, but that the same brain processes are implemented as for well-known words.

Neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic studies suggest that grammatical (gender) and phonological information are retrieved independently and that gender can be accessed before phonological information. This study investigated the relative time courses of gender and phonological encoding using topographic evoked potentials mapping methods. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded using a high resolution electroencephalogram (EEG) system (128 channels) during gender and phoneme monitoring in silent picture naming. Behavioural results showed similar reaction times (RT) between gender and word onset (first phoneme) monitoring, and longer RT when monitoring the second syllable onset. Temporal segmentation analysis (defining dominant map topographies using cluster analysis) revealed no timing difference between gender monitoring and word onset monitoring: both effects fall within the same time window at about 270-290 ms after picture presentation. Monitoring a second syllable onset generated a later effect at about 480 ms. Direct comparison between gender and first phoneme monitoring revealed a difference of only 10 ms between tasks at approximately 200 ms. Taken together, these results suggest that lemma retrieval and phonological encoding may proceed in parallel or overlap. Word onset is retrieved simultaneously with gender, while the longer RT and the later ERP effect for second syllable onset reflect that segmental encoding continues incrementally to the following phonemes.

Reading predictors evolve through age: phonological awareness is the best predictor of reading abilities at the beginning of reading acquisition while Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) becomes the best reading predictor in more experienced readers (around 9–10 years old). Those developmental changes in the relationship between RAN and reading have so far been explained in term of participants' age. However, it should be noted that in the previous experiments age always co-vary with participants reading level. It is thus not clear whether RAN-reading relationship is developmental in nature or related to the reading system itself. This study investigates whether the behavioral changes in the relationship between RAN and reading and their electrophysiological correlates are related to the chronological age or to the reading level of the participants. Thirty two French-speaking children aged 7–10 years took part to the experiment: they were divided into groups contrasted on age but with similar reading levels and the other way round. Participants performed two reading tasks and four RAN tasks. EEG/ERP was recorded during discrete letter and picture RAN. Behavioral results revealed that alphanumeric RAN is more sensitive to age variations than reading level differences. The inverse profile was revealed for picture RAN, which discriminate poor and good readers among typically developed children within the same age-group. ERPs of both letter and picture RAN differed across age groups whereas only for the picture RAN ERPs differed across reading levels. Taken together, these results suggest that picture RAN is a particularly good indicator of reading level variance independently of age.

International audience; Electrophysiological research using verbal response paradigms faces the problem of muscle artifacts that occur during speech production or in the period preceding articulation. In this context, this paper has two related aims. The first is to show how the nature of the first phoneme influences the alignment of the ERPs. The second is to further characterize the EEG signal around the onset of articulation, both in temporal and frequency domains. Participants were asked to name aloud pictures of common objects. We applied microstate analyses and time-frequency transformations of ERPs locked to vocal onset to compare the EEG signal between voiced and unvoiced labial plosive word onset consonants. We found a delay of about 40 ms in the set of stable topographic patterns for /b/ relative to /p/ onset words. A similar shift was observed in the power increase of gamma oscillations (30-50 Hz), which had an earlier onset for /p/ trials (similar to 150 ms before vocal onset). This 40-ms shift is consistent with the length of the voiced proportion of the acoustic signal prior to the release of the closure in the vocal responses. These results demonstrate that phonetic features are an important parameter affecting response-locked ERPs, and hence that the onset of the acoustic energy may not be an optimal trigger for synchronizing the EEG activity to the response in vocal paradigms. The indexes explored in this study provide a step forward in the characterization of muscle-related artifacts in electrophysiological studies of speech and language production.

Background: Producing a word in referential naming requires to select the right word in our mental lexicon among co-activated semantically related words. The mechanisms underlying semantic context effects during speech planning are still controversial, particularly for semantic facilitation which investigation remains under-represented in contrast to the plethora of studies dealing with interference. Our aim is to study the time-course of semantic facilitation in picture naming, using a picture-word "interference" paradigm and event-related potentials (ERPs). Methods: We compared two different types of semantic relationships, associative and categorical, in a single word priming and a double word priming paradigm. The primes were presented visually with a long negative Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA), which is expected to cause facilitation. Results: Shorter naming latencies were observed after both associative and categorical primes, as compared to unrelated primes, and even shorter latencies after two primes. Electrophysiological results showed relatively late modulations of waveform amplitudes for both types of primes (beginning ~330 ms post picture onset with a single prime and ~275 ms post picture onset with two primes), corresponding to a shift in latency of similar topographic maps across conditions. Conclusion: The present results are in favor of a post-lexical locus of semantic facilitation for associative and categorical priming in picture naming and confirm that semantic facilitation is as relevant as semantic interference to inform on word production. The post-lexical locus argued here might be related to self-monitoting or/and to modulations at the level of word-form planning, without excluding the participation of strategic processes.

Background: People with aphasia present with different of demographic, language, stroke, and impairment profiles. A Cochrane review found that two-thirds of included trials had comparison data on p...

Background: Producing a word in referential naming requires to select the right word in our mental lexicon among co-activated semantically related words. The mechanisms underlying semantic context effects during speech planning are still controversial, particularly for semantic facilitation which investigation remains under-represented in contrast to the plethora of studies dealing with interference. Our aim is to study the time-course of semantic facilitation in picture naming, using a picture-word “interference” paradigm and event-related potentials (ERPs). Methods: We compared two different types of semantic relationships, associative and categorical, in a single word priming and a double word priming paradigm. The primes were presented visually with a long negative Stimulus Onset Asynchrony (SOA), which is expected to cause facilitation. Results: Shorter naming latencies were observed after both associative and categorical primes, as compared to unrelated primes, and even shorter latencies after two primes. Electrophysiological results showed relatively late modulations of waveform amplitudes for both types of primes (beginning ~330 ms post picture onset with a single prime and ~275 ms post picture onset with two primes), corresponding to a shift in latency of similar topographic maps across conditions. Conclusion: The present results are in favor of a post-lexical locus of semantic facilitation for associative and categorical priming in picture naming and confirm that semantic facilitation is as relevant as semantic interference to inform on word production. The post-lexical locus argued here might be related to self-monitoting or/and to modulations at the level of word-form planning, without excluding the participation of strategic processes.

The transformation of an abstract phonological code into articulation has been hypothesized to involve the retrieval of stored syllable-sized motor plans. Accordingly, gestural scores for frequently used syllables are retrieved from memory whereas gestural scores for novel and possibly low frequency syllables are assembled on-line. The present study was designed to test this hypothesis. Participants produced disyllabic pseudowords with high frequency, low frequency and non-existent (novel) initial syllables. Behavioral results revealed slower production latencies for novel than for high frequency syllables. Event-related potentials diverged in waveform amplitudes and global topographic patterns between high frequency and low frequency/novel syllables around 170 ms before the onset of articulation. These differences indicate the recruitment of different brain networks during the production of frequent and infrequent/novel syllables, in line with the hypothesis that speakers store syllabic-sized motor programs for frequent syllables and assemble these motor plans on-line for low frequency and novel syllables.

Most of our knowledge on the time-course of the mechanisms involved in reading derived from electrophysiological studies is based on lexical decision tasks. By contrast, very few ERP studies investigated the processes involved in reading aloud. It has been suggested that the lexical decision task provides a good index of the processes occurring during reading aloud, with only late processing differences related to task response modalities. However, some behavioral studies reported different sensitivity to psycholinguistic factors between the two tasks, suggesting that print processing could differ at earlier processing stages. The aim of the present study was thus to carry out an ERP comparison between lexical decision and reading aloud in order to determine when print processing differs between these two tasks. Twenty native French speakers performed a lexical decision task and a reading aloud task with the same written stimuli. Results revealed different electrophysiological patterns on both waveform amplitudes and global topography between lexical decision and reading aloud from about 140 ms after stimulus presentation for both words and pseudowords, i.e., as early as the N170 component. These results suggest that only very early, low-level visual processes are common to the two tasks which differ in core processes. Taken together, our main finding questions the use of the lexical decision task as an appropriate paradigm to investigate reading processes and warns against generalizing its results to word reading.

The increasing word finding difficulty is one of the most investigated characteristics of language ageing. The transmission deficit model postulates an age related weakening in the pathway from lexicon to phonology leading to insufficient priming of the complete phonology. To bring neurophysiological evidence of age related modifications in word production we investigated the inter age time course of ERPs in picture naming compared to picture–word verification where lexical–phonological processes are not involved. Only marginal age related differences in RTs were found in picture naming. Older adults showed lower accuracy in picture naming but higher accuracy in picture–word verification. Between age ERP divergences were observed in an early time window associated with semantic processes. In picture naming age differences in ERP amplitudes were also observed in a later time window compatible with phonological processing. Results suggest that modifications in word production could stem from age related changes affecting the processing dynamics in the semantic system.

Based on findings for overlapping representations of bilingual people's first (L1) and second (L2) languages, unilingual therapies of bilingual aphasia have been proposed to benefit the untrained language. However, the generalisation patterns of intra- and cross-language and phonological therapy and their neural bases remain unclear. We tested whether the effects of an intensive lexical-phonological training (LPT) in L2 transferred to L1 word production in a Persian-French bilingual stroke patient with Broca's aphasia. Language performance was assessed using the Bilingual Aphasia Test, a 144-item picture naming (PN) task and a word–picture verification (WPV) task. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded during PN and WPV in both languages before and after an LPT in French on a wordlist from the PN task. After the therapy, naming improved only for the treated L2 items. The naming performance improved neither in the untrained L2 items nor in the corresponding items in L1. EEG analyses revealed a Language x Session topographic interaction at 540 ms post-stimulus, driven by a modification of the electrophysiological response to the treated L2 but not L1 items. These results indicate that LPT modified the brain networks engaged in the phonological-phonetic processing during naming only in the trained language for the trained items.

Resume L’origine phonologique ou phonetique de transformations observees dans la production de patients aphasiques est souvent source de debat aussi bien chez les cliniciens que chez les chercheurs. Dans cette revue de la litterature nous proposerons un survol des modeles theoriques expliquant la production d’erreurs phonologiques et phonetiques et leur dynamique temporelle durant la planification de la parole et revisiterons les arguments en faveur de la separation phonologique-phonetique. Nous illustrerons en particulier les raisons sous-tendant les difficultes d’identification de l’origine phonologique ou phonetique des paraphasies phonemiques ainsi que les debats theoriques sur la distinction entre processus phonologiques et phonetiques.

BACKGROUND Aphasia recovery remains difficult to predict initially in particular for the most severe cases. The features of impaired verbal communication which are the basis for cognitive-linguistic diagnosis and treatment could be part of prediction of recovery from aphasia. AIM This study investigated whether some components of language screening in the acute phase of stroke are reliable prognostic factors for language recovery in the post-acute phase. DESIGN Monocentric prospective study. SETTING University hospital stroke unit. POPULATION Eighty-six patients aged between 21 and 92 years (mean=67.4, SD=15.3) were admitted after a first left hemisphere stroke with aphasia and were consecutively included. METHODS Language assessment was performed in the acute phase and 3 months post-stroke with the LAnguage Screening Test (LAST) and the Aphasia Severity Rating Scale (ASRS) of the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE). Severe aphasia was defined as ASRS

Il arrive de plus en plus frequemment dans les consultations neuropsychologiques et aphasiologiques de devoir examiner et suivre des patients aphasiques bilingues pour lesquels la langue environnante est la deuxieme langue (L2). Le fait que ces patients beneficient generalement d’une prise en charge de leur L2 mais pas de leur langue maternelle (L1) souleve la question de l’efficacite de la reeducation d’une langue moins bien ou peu maitrisee par les patients et de la generalisation des effets de la therapie a la langue non traitee. Cette revue de la litterature limitee a la reeducation de la langue plus faible chez des patients aphasiques bilingues montre que la therapie en L2 est efficace, mais que le transfert des benefices a la langue non traitee n’est pas assure et semble limite a des conditions particulieres impliquant des processus ou representations communes entre les deux langues. Dans la plupart des situations, la reeducation proposee en L2 n’aura donc pas d’effets sur la L1, ce qui implique que l’autre langue devrait egalement etre reeduquee lorsque cela est possible et necessaire pour le patient.

Speakers usually produce words in connected speech. In such contexts the form in which many words are uttered is influenced by the phonological properties of neighboring words. The current article examines the representations and processes underlying the production of phonologically constrained word form variations. For this purpose we consider determiners whose form is sensitive to phonological context (e.g. in English: a car vs. an animal; in French: le chien 'the dog' vs. l'âne 'the donkey'). Two hypotheses have been proposed regarding how these words are processed. Determiners either are thought to have different representations for each of their surface forms or they are thought to have only 1 representation while other forms are generated online after selection through a rule based process. We tested the predictions derived from these 2 views in 3 picture naming experiments. Participants named pictures using determiner adjective noun phrases (e.g. la nouvelle table 'the new table'). Phonologically consistent or inconsistent conditions were contrasted based on the phonological onsets of the adjective and the noun. Results revealed shorter naming latencies for consistent than for inconsistent sequences (i.e. a phonological consistency effect) for all the determiner types tested. Our interpretation of these findings converges on the assumption that determiners with varying surface forms are represented in memory with multiple phonological lexical representations. This conclusion is discussed in relation to models of determiner processing and models of lexical variability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA all rights reserved).

International audience; Here we tested the multiple-loci hypothesis of age-of-acquisition effects in both spoken and handwritten object naming using Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) and spatiotemporal segmentation analysis. Participants had to say aloud or write down picture names that varied on frequency trajectory (age-of-acquisition). Early-acquired words yielded shorter naming times than late-acquired words in both spoken and written naming. More importantly, AoA modulated ERPs only during a later time-window in both output modalities: waveforms started to diverge around 400 ms, which corresponded to the end of a period of topographic stability starting at around 260 ms in both conditions. These stable electrophysiological maps lasted longer in the late than in the early-acquired condition and shifted the onset of the following periods of stable electrophysiological activity. Taken together, the findings are at odds with the multiple loci hypothesis, but support the hypothesis that AoA affects a single encoding level, namely the word-form encoding process.

Introduction/Background Recovery from aphasia remains difficult to predict. Among the language features predicting recovery from aphasia, production scores such as repetition or phonology seem to be more relevant predictors than only severity. As motor cortex is strongly involved in language processes, both production and perception, the present study aimed to determine whether the integration of an electrophysiological measure of the motor networks using motor-evoked potentials MEP in the acute phase of stroke can improve the prediction of recovery from post-stroke aphasia. Material and method Hundred and twelve patients with aphasia within 14 days after a first ischemic or haemorrhagic stroke completed the study. The severity of aphasia was assessed using the Aphasia Severity Rating Scale (ASRS) at baseline and 6 month (M6) after the stroke. The ASRS is a 6-point Likert scale from the lowest score 0 to 5. A severe aphasia initially was defined as an ASRS score MEPs were recorded from the abductor pollicis brevis muscle and orbicularis oris. The resting motor threshold (rMT) was defined for each muscle and a ratio between left and right rMT (rMTr) was calculated for upper-limbs and for lips. Results A first-level model, including only clinical variables (i.e. initial severity) predicted severity at six months for severe patients. When the rMTr of upper limbs was added in a second-level model, the predictive power significantly increased from 41 to 51%, as well as adding in a third-level model rMTr of upper-limbs and initial fibres number ratio of the corticospinal tracts (41 to 55%). With the changes of severity as the dependent variable, the same factors made a significant contribution and the predictive power of a second-level model increased from 4 to 20% to the same extent as in a third-level model (4% to 27%). Conclusion Added with usual clinical factors, MEPs of upper-limbs and lips contribute to the prediction of aphasia recovery, particularly for patients with severe aphasia initially.

In a system where tens of thousands of words are made up of a limited number of phonemes, many words are bound to sound alike. This similarity of the words in the lexicon as characterized by phonological neighbourhood density (PhND) has been shown to affect speed and accuracy of word comprehension and production. Whereas there is a consensus about the interfering nature of neighbourhood effects in comprehension, the language production literature offers a more contradictory picture with mainly facilitatory but also interfering effects reported on word production. Here we report both of these two types of effects in the same study. Multiple regression mixed models analyses were conducted on PhND effects on errors produced in a naming task by a group of 21 participants with aphasia. These participants produced more formal errors (interfering effect) for words in dense phonological neighbourhoods, but produced fewer nonwords and semantic errors (a facilitatory effect) with increasing density. In order to investigate the nature of these opposite effects of PhND, we further analysed a subset of formal errors and nonword errors by distinguishing errors differing on a single phoneme from the target (corresponding to the definition of phonological neighbours) from those differing on two or more phonemes. This analysis confirmed that only formal errors that were phonological neighbours of the target increased in dense neighbourhoods, while all other errors decreased. Based on additional observations favouring a lexical origin of these formal errors (they exceeded the probability of producing a real-word error by chance, were of a higher frequency, and preserved the grammatical category of the targets), we suggest that the interfering effect of PhND is due to competition between lexical neighbours and target words in dense neighbourhoods.

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) has demonstrated beneficial effects on motor learning. It would be important to obtain a similar enhancement for verbal learning. However, previous studies have mostly assessed short-term effects of rTMS on language performance and the effect on learning is largely unknown. This study examined whether an inhibition of the right Broca homologue has long-term impact on neural processes underlying the acquisition of new words in healthy individuals. Sixteen young participants trained a new-word learning paradigm with rare, mostly unknown objects and their corresponding words immediately after continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) or sham stimulation of right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in a cross-over design. Neural effects were assessed with electroencephalography (EEG) source power analyses during the naming task as well as coherence analyses at rest one day before and after training.Inhibition of the right Broca homologue did not affect new word learning performance at the group level. Behavioral and neural responses to cTBS were variable across participants and were associated with the magnitude of resting-state alpha-band coherence between the stimulated area and the rest of the brain before stimulation. Only participants with high intrinsic alpha-band coherence between the stimulated area and the rest of the brain before stimulation showed the expected inhibition during naming and greater learning performance. In conclusion, our study confirms that cTBS can induce lasting modulations of neural processes which are associated with learning, but the effect depends on the individual network state.

Reading strategies vary across languages according to orthographic depth - the complexity of the grapheme in relation to phoneme conversion rules - notably at the level of eye movement patterns. We recently demonstrated that a group of early bilinguals, who learned both languages equally under the age of seven, presented a first fixation location (FFL) closer to the beginning of words when reading in German as compared with French. Since German is known to be orthographically more transparent than French, this suggested that different strategies were being engaged depending on the orthographic depth of the used language. Opaque languages induce a global reading strategy, and transparent languages force a local/serial strategy. Thus, pseudo-words were processed using a local strategy in both languages, suggesting that the link between word forms and their lexical representation may also play a role in selecting a specific strategy. In order to test whether corresponding effects appear in late bilinguals with low proficiency in their second language (L2), we present a new study in which we recorded eye movements while two groups of late German-French and French-German bilinguals read aloud isolated French and German words and pseudo-words. Since, a transparent reading strategy is local and serial, with a high number of fixations per stimuli, and the level of the bilingual participants' L2 is low, the impact of language opacity should be observed in L1. We therefore predicted a global reading strategy if the bilinguals' L1 was French (FFL close to the middle of the stimuli with fewer fixations per stimuli) and a local and serial reading strategy if it was German. Thus, the L2 of each group, as well as pseudo-words, should also require a local and serial reading strategy. Our results confirmed these hypotheses, suggesting that global word processing is only achieved by bilinguals with an opaque L1 when reading in an opaque language; the low level in the L2 gives way to a local and serial reading strategy. These findings stress the fact that reading behavior is influenced not only by the linguistic mode but also by top-down factors, such as readers' proficiency.

MonPaGe est un outil d’evaluation de la parole couvrant differents aspects de la production de la parole (voix, mobilite et precision articulatoire, prosodie, fluence, processus phonologiques, intelligibilite, etc.) et differents facteurs pouvant affecter cette production (complexite et longueur des sequences, types de son, position prosodique, contexte phonetique, parole continue ou isolee, etc.). Le temps de passation est adapte a la pratique clinique (15 minutes environ). L’analyse permet l’extraction semi-automatique d’indices perceptifs et acoustiques de la parole de patients adultes atteints de troubles moteurs de la parole. Ce protocole repond a un besoin criant d’outils normes et valides pour la langue francaise (Jan, 2007). Les batteries tels que la BECD (Auzou et Rolland-Monnoury, 2006) permettent une evaluation perceptivo-motrice de la dysarthrie (Darley et al., 1969), mais n’en offre pas une analyse acoustique directe. Le logiciel Vocalab 4 (Sicard E., et al., 2013 ; Sicard A. et Sicard E., 2014) et les applications du constructeur anglo-saxon KayPentax ® (ADSV, MDVP) restent uniquement dedies a l’analyse de la voix. Notre groupe de reflexion, compose d’orthophonistes, de phoneticiens et de psycholinguistes, a elabore un protocole d’evaluation comprenant des modules couvrant divers aspects de la parole : productions de [a] tenus, diadococinesies verbales, syllabes, pseudo-mots, phrases avec modulations prosodiques et lecture d’un texte. Le protocole est entierement informatise, tant au niveau de la passation des modules successifs (incluant l’enregistrement des productions du patient) que de la procedure d’evaluation, c’est-a-dire de la cotation qualitative (perceptifs ou visuels sur representations spectrographiques) et quantitative (mesures acoustiques) de caracteres deviants dans la parole. L’informatisation permet une meilleure standardisation des conditions de passation, des criteres d’evaluation et du pre-traitement des donnees recueillies. Cette presentation decrira le protocole et fera un point sur l’avancee de sa validation et normalisation aupres de differentes populations (sains et pathologiques).

International audience; Differences between the cognitive processes involved in word reading and picture naming are well established (e.g., visual or lexico-semantic stages). Still, it is commonly thought that retrieval of phonological forms is shared across tasks. We report a test of this second hypothesis based on the time course of electroencephalographic (EEG) neural activity, reasoning that similar EEG patterns might index similar processing stages. Seventeen participants named objects and read aloud the corresponding words while their behavior and EEG activity were recorded. The latter was analyzed from stimulus onset onward (stimulus-locked analysis) and from response onset backward (response-locked analysis), using non-parametric statistics and the spatio-temporal segmentation of ERPs. Behavioral results confirmed that reading entails shorter latencies than naming. The analysis of EEG activity within the stimulus-to-response period allowed to distinguish three phases, broadly successive. Early on, we observed identical distribution of electric field potentials (i.e., topographies) albeit with large amplitude divergences between tasks. Then, we observed sustained cross-task differences in topographies accompanied by extended amplitude differences. Finally, the two tasks again revealed the same topographies, with significant cross-task delays in their onsets and offsets, and still significant amplitude differences. In the response-locked ERPs, the common topography displayed an offset closer to response articulation in word reading compared with picture naming, that is the transition between the offset of this shared map and the onset of articulation was significantly faster in word reading. The results suggest that the degree of cross-task similarity varies across time. The first phase suggests similar visual processes of variable intensity and time course across tasks, while the second phase suggests marked differences. Finally, similarities and differences within the third phase are compatible with a shared processing stage (likely phonological processes) with different temporal properties (onset/offset) across tasks. Overall, our results provide an overview of when, between stimulus and response, word reading and picture naming are subtended by shared- versus task-specific neural signatures. This in turn is suggestive of when the two tasks involve similar vs. different cognitive processes.

Speakers know that it is hard to produce tongue-twister-like utterances involving repeated and similar phonemes (“She sells socks in a small shoe shop”). While utterances involving phonologically similar phonemes consistently give rise to speech errors, repeated phonemes have been shown to interfere as well as to facilitate production. Here we try to shed light on this paradox by investigating brain processes underlying planning utterances involving similar and repeated phonemes (tongue-twister-like) and utterances with only repeated phonemes elicited with picture naming during electroencephalographic/event-related potentials (EEG/ERP) recording. Tongue-twister-like utterances increased error rates while repeated onset phonemes decreased reaction times. Both types of utterances modulated ERPs after 370 ms following picture onset by shortening a period of stable electrophysiological pattern. Another microstate was lengthened for tongue-twister-like utterances only, wiping out the timing difference of the previous microstate. These results indicate priming of repeated phonemes and cost of encoding similar phonemes, both phenomena co-occurring in tongue-twisters.

Le test informatise de comprehension syntaxique en francais (TICSf) a ete cree dans le but de repondre au manque de tests normes de comprehension syntaxique en aphasiologie. Le TICSf comprend deux listes paralleles de cinquante phrases, a l’oral et a l’ecrit, evaluant de maniere egale cinq types de structures syntaxiques (actives, passives, relatives, negatives et avec complement prepositionnel). La tâche est un appariement phrase-image, qui comprend une reponse « autre » a selectionner lorsqu’aucune des quatre images ne convient, destinee a reduire les reponses au hasard. Une evaluation lexicale, reprenant les items lexicaux utilises dans l’evaluation syntaxique, est egalement disponible. Le TICSf a ete norme sur une population adulte francophone de 152 sujets, âges de 19 a 88 ans. Les resultats, analyses a l’aide d’un modele mixte lineaire generalise, (1) confirment que la comprehension syntaxique est un processus amodal et mettent en evidence (2) un effet de l’âge des 60 ans, (3) un effet du niveau socioculturel et (4) un effet du type de phrases, en particulier pour les relatives, qui sont plus difficiles a comprendre. Les normes sont fournies par modalite, par groupes d’âges, par niveaux de formation et par type de phrases.

The transformation of an abstract concept into an articulated word is achieved through a series of encoding processes, which time course has been repeatedly investigated in the psycholinguistic and neuroimaging literature on single word production. The estimates of the time course issued from previous investigations represent the timing of process duration for mean processing speed: as production speed varies significantly across speakers, a crucial question is how the timing of encoding processing varies with speed. Here we investigated whether between-subjects variability in the speed of speech production is distributed along all encoding processes or if it is accounted for by a specific processing stage. We analysed event-related electroencephalographical (ERP) correlates during overt picture naming in 45 subjects divided into three speed subgroups according to their production latencies. Production speed modulated waveform amplitudes in the time window ranging from about 200 to 350 ms after picture presentation and the duration of a stable electrophysiological spatial configuration in the same time period. The remaining time windows from picture onset to 200 ms before articulation were unaffected by speed. By contrast, the manipulation of a psycholinguistic variable, word age-of-acquisition, modulated ERPs in all speed subgroups in a different and later time period, starting at around 400 ms after picture presentation, associated with phonological encoding processes. These results indicate that the between-subject variability in the speed of single word production is principally accounted for by the timing of a stable electrophysiological activity in the 200-350 ms time period, presumably associated with lexical selection.

We present a 3-year follow-up study of a patient with progressive apraxia of speech (PAoS), aimed at investigating whether the theoretical organization of phonetic encoding is reflected in the progressive disruption of speech. As decreased speech rate was the most striking pattern of disruption during the first 2 years, durational analyses were carried out longitudinally on syllables excised from spontaneous, repetition and reading speech samples. The crucial result of the present study is the demonstration of an effect of syllable frequency on duration: the progressive disruption of articulation rate did not affect all syllables in the same way, but followed a gradient that was function of the frequency of use of syllable-sized motor programs. The combination of data from this case of PAoS with previous psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic data, points to a frequency organization of syllable-sized speech-motor plans. In this study we also illustrate how studying PAoS can be exploited in theoretical and clinical investigations of phonetic encoding as it represents a unique opportunity to investigate speech while it progressively disrupts.

Changes in brain activity characterizing impaired speech production after brain damage have usually been investigated by comparing aphasic speakers with healthy subjects because prestroke data are normally not available. However, when interpreting the results of studies of stroke patients versus healthy controls, there is an inherent difficulty in disentangling the contribution of neuropathology from other sources of between-subject variability. In the present work, we had an unusual opportunity to study an aphasic patient with severe anomia who had incidentally performed a picture naming task in an ERP study as a control subject one year before suffering a left hemisphere stroke. The fortuitous recording of this patient's brain activity before his stroke allows direct comparison of his pre- and poststroke brain activity in the same language production task. The subject did not differ from other healthy subjects before his stroke, but presented major electrophysiological differences after stroke, both in comparison to himself before stroke and to the control group. ERP changes consistently appeared after stroke in a specific time window starting about 250 msec after picture onset, characterized by a single divergent but stable topographic configuration of the scalp electric field associated with a cortical generator abnormally limited to left temporal posterior perilesional areas. The patient's pattern of anomia revealed a severe lexical–phonological impairment and his ERP responses diverged from those of healthy controls in the time window that has previously been associated with lexical–phonological processes during picture naming. Given that his prestroke ERPs were indistinguishable from those of healthy controls, it seems highly likely that the change in his poststroke ERPs is due to changes in language production processes as a consequence of stroke. The patient's neurolinguistic deficits, combined with the ERPs results, provide unique evidence for the role of left temporal cortex in lexical–phonological processing from about 250 to 450 msec during word production.

Most EEG studies analysing speech production with event related brain potential (ERP) have adopted silent metalinguistic tasks or delayed or tacit picture naming in order to avoid possible artefacts during motor preparation. A central issue in the interpretation of these results is whether the processes involved in those tasks are comparable to those involved in overt speech production. In the present study we addressed a methodological issue about the integration of stimulus-aligned and response-aligned ERPs in immediate overt picture naming in comparison to delayed production, coupled with a theoretical point on the effect of word Age of Acquisition (AoA). High density EEG recordings were used and waveform analyses and spatio-temporal segmentation were combined on stimulus-aligned and response-aligned ERPs. The same sequence and duration of topographic maps appeared in the immediate and delayed production until around 350 ms after picture onset, revealing similar encoding processes until the beginning of phonological encoding, but modulations linked to word AoA were only observed in the immediate production. Considering stimulus-aligned and response-aligned ERPs together allowed to identify that a stable topography starting around 350 ms lasts 30 ms longer for late-acquired than for early-acquired words. This difference falls within the time-window of phonological encoding and its modulation can be linked to the longer production latencies for late-acquired words.

Introduction et Objectif : Plusieurs etudes ont identifie comme facteurs pronostiques du retablissement de l’aphasie l’âge ou le sexe du patient, la lateralite et la taille de la lesion, le sous type d’AVC, la severite initiale de l’aphasie. Cependant, il reste encore des difficultes a predire la recuperation de l’aphasie chez les patients atteints initialement d’une aphasie severe. Le but de cette etude etait donc de localiser les lesions associees a une recuperation dans une cohorte de patients aphasiques. Methode : 100 patients aphasiques ont ete inclus dans les 14 jours suivant un premier AVC hemorragique ou ischemique de l’hemisphere gauche. Ces patients avaient des sequences d’IRM analysables. La severite de l’aphasie a ete determinee en utilisant l’echelle d’evaluation de la severite de l’aphasie (ASRS) a la phase aigue puis a 6 mois post AVC. Une aphasie est definie comme severe par un score ASRS inferieur a 3. Une bonne recuperation a 6 mois etait definie par un ASRS de 4 ou 5. Les performances langagieres ont aussi ete analysees. Dans un premier temps, des images ponderees en diffusion axiale ou en T2* (d’hemorragie intra-cerebrale) ont ete importees. Les regions des lesions d’interet ont ete dessinees a la main, en aveugle par rapport aux donnees cliniques. Les images ont ete ensuite normalisees comparativement a un modele de cerveau standard dans un espace MNI et appliquees sur un modele adapte. Les cartes de lesions normalisees ont ete analysees selon une approche VLSM (voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping), qui superpose les informations comportementales, a l’information voxel sur les lesions binaires. Les cartes qui resultent de ces travaux ont ete corrigees pour des comparaisons multiples. Resultats : Pour tous les patients, un meilleur resultat concernant la recuperation de l’aphasie etait significativement associe (p

Despite a general consensus about the lexical phonological origin of phonological errors a debate persists concerning a single or multiple origins of such errors. In particular a similar post lexical origin has been attributed to milder phonological paraphasias such as phoneme substitution errors and to normal slips of the tongue. However most slips of the tongue have a contextual origin while most phonological paraphasias are not contextual errors. Here we explore the possibility that even at post lexical encoding levels different errors are generated by distinct processes. We take advantage of the production of an unusual proportion of within word phoneme movement errors in a patient with conduction aphasia (SJ) and tackle the question of their origin in comparison to phoneme substitution errors. Error properties relative to phoneme substitution and phoneme movement errors produced by SJ were analysed and compared with those of a second patient (GF) who produced a similar proportion of substitution errors but no movement errors. Very similar profiles between the two patients emerged on substitution errors while phoneme movement errors displayed different properties. The observation that substitution and movement errors are not affected by the same factors favours a different origin of these errors. The sub lexical frequency and similarity effects and the lexical bias in substitution errors indicate an interaction between multiple encoding levels during the production of these errors; by contrast movement errors seem related to a different and independent process bearing no interaction with other levels of representation.

Background: The observation of a syllable frequency effect on production latencies in healthy speakers has been an argument in favour of stored syllables in speech production. In Levelt, Roelofs, and Meyer's (1999) model of speech production, syllabic representations are accessed during phonetic encoding. Neurolinguistic studies have provided convergent evidence of a syllable frequency effect on production accuracy in speakers with acquired language disorders. However, the observation that syllable frequency also affected production in aphasic speakers with a pre‐phonetic impairment (conduction aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia) seems in contradiction to the phonetic locus of syllabic representations. Aims: We illustrate the points of convergences and divergences between psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic results on the locus of the syllable frequency effect and explore whether a syllable frequency effect is observed in apraxia of speech (AoS) and in conduction aphasia when participants are tested with the...

Electrophysiological correlates of recovery from anomia were analysed in four aphasic patients in the post-acute stage. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during picture naming at baseline and after a period of therapy for anomia. All patients had severe anomia at baseline assessment and improved significantly in naming during the study period. Waveform analyses and temporal segmentation were carried out on the ERPs of each patient in comparison with 15 healthy control subjects. Normalisation as well as an increase of abnormal electrophysiological correlates accompanied recovery. An increase of abnormal amplitudes appeared in a patient with semantic impairment during the first 300 ms after picture onset, while only normalisation of amplitudes and topographic maps accompanied recovery in the three patients with lexical-phonological impairment in this early time-window. Abnormal amplitudes and topographic maps emerged during recovery in the patients with lexical-phonological impairment in later time-windows, starting between 250 and 300 ms. Follow-up ERP recordings carried out 6 months later in two of them showed normalisation of amplitudes and persistence of abnormal maps. The results suggest that electrophysiological changes accompanying recovery from anomia in the post-acute stage are observed in specific time-windows, probably corresponding to different encoding processes and that recovery correlates with normalisation of EEG patterns as well as with the emergence of abnormalities, which presumably indicates compensation mechanisms of specific encoding processes.

Polyglot speakers who become aphasics are not necessarily affected to the same extent in each language. In some cases there is a mixing of the different languages or a switching between languages and in very rare cases the switch is to the language seldom if ever used in everyday live. We report a French-speaking aphasic, who switched paradoxically from his mother tongue (French) to a second language (German) which he had learned at school but barely mastered and hardly ever spoke, and kept using German most of the time. We tried to understand the mechanism responsible for that phenomenon by reviewing the actual hypothesis of multi-language organization. We concluded, in line with previous reports, that our case used his metalinguistic knowledge to compensate for his inability to access his linguistic skills.

The verb/noun dissociation has often involved the semantic/grammatical confound. We conducted two event-related potentials (ERPs) studies with the aim of minimizing this confound. In Experiment 1 participants named pictures depicting actions, with verbs or nouns and pictures depicting objects with nouns. In Experiment 2, participants named objects (nouns) or actions (verbs/nouns) from the same set of action pictures. Compatible with lexical-semantic processes, semantic category modulated waveform amplitudes and topographic patterns between 250 and 380 ms after picture-onset in Experiment 1. No such effects were observed in Experiment 2. No effects were found for grammatical class in both experiments suggesting that grammatical information is not mandatorily activated during lexical-semantic processes. Given the absence of dissociation when same pictures were used the results are described as feed-forward effects from visual to semantic processing, indicating differential neural networks for lexical selection of action and object words from their corresponding visual referents.

Picture naming tasks are widely used both in children and adults to investigate language production for research and for assessment purposes. The main theoretical models of single word production based on the investigation of picture naming in adults provide a detailed account of the principal mental operations involved in the transformation of an abstract concept into articulated speech and their temporal dynamics. These models and in particular their time-course do not apply directly to children who display much longer production latencies than adults. Here we investigate the functional processes and the temporal dynamics of word encoding in school-age children and adults. ERPs were analysed from picture onset to the onset of articulation in 32 children and 32 adults performing the same overt picture naming task. Waveform analyses were not informative since differences appeared throughout the entire period, due to an early shift of waveform morphology and to larger amplitudes in children. However, when the sequences of periods of topographic stability were considered, different patterns of electric fields at scalp only appeared in approximately the first third of the analysed period, corresponding to the P1-N1 complex. From about 200 ms in adults and from 300 ms in children to articulation onset similar patterns of global topography were observed across groups but with a different time distribution. These results indicate qualitative changes in an early time-window, likely corresponding to pre-linguistic processes, and only quantitative changes in later time-windows, suggesting similar mental operations underlying lexical processes between age-school children and adults, with temporal dynamic changes during development.

International audience; The present study builds upon findings from event-related potential (ERP) studies of single word production in order to shed light onto the mechanisms underlying the production of dual-word adjective-noun phrases (NPs). In a first experiment, we tested for potential differences elicited by visual stimuli varying in complexity -black and white line drawings, coloured line drawings, and arrays of drawings-in participants producing single nouns. Whilst naming latencies were similar for single noun production between visual stimuli conditions, ERPs differed between drawing arrays and single drawings in a time-window extending beyond early visual analysis. In a second experiment, different participants were asked to produce either single noun or adjective-noun dual-word phrases to black-and-white and coloured line drawings, respectively. Adjective-noun phrase production (2W) resulted in naming latencies 53 msec longer than single noun (1W) production. Waveform amplitude and topographic analyses carried out on stimulus- and response-aligned ERPs indicated that the two conditions differed in a late time-window, with a topographic pattern for 2W lasting from 300 to 480 msec after picture presentation whereas the corresponding pattern for 1W production lasted from 300 to 450 msec. Since this time window has been previously associated with phonological encoding in single word production, this result suggests that the cost of planning the second word in dual-word production may be incurred during phonological encoding of the first word. The results are discussed in light of current models of single and multi-word production.

Converging evidences from eye movement experiments indicate that linguistic contexts influence reading strategies. However, the question of whether different linguistic contexts modulate eye movements during reading in the same bilingual individuals remains unresolved. We examined reading strategies in a transparent (German) and an opaque (French) language of early, highly proficient French–German bilinguals: participants read aloud isolated French and German words and pseudo-words while the First Fixation Location (FFL), its duration and latency were measured. Since transparent linguistic contexts and pseudo-words would favour a direct grapheme/phoneme conversion, the reading strategy should be more local for German than for French words (FFL closer to the beginning) and no difference is expected in pseudo-words’ FFL between contexts. Our results confirm these hypotheses, providing the first evidence that the same individuals engage different reading strategy depending on language opacity, suggesting that a given brain process can be modulated by a given context.

In this study, we investigated whether a syllable frequency effect can be observed in aphasic speakers with a phonological encoding impairment. First of all, we analysed the substitution errors from seven aphasic subjects comparing the frequency of the target syllable to the frequency of the produced syllable. A significant effect of syllable frequency was observed on three subjects' errors and this effect was independent of phoneme frequency in two of them. Secondly, we examined whether syllable frequency can affect the production accuracy on a non-word repetition task. Two aphasic subjects produced significantly more correct responses to non-words composed of high frequency than of low frequency syllables. Finally, syllable frequency was manipulated in monosyllabic words and we analysed the performance and the errors of a single case aphasic subject producing phonemic paraphasias on monosyllabic words. No syllable frequency effect was observed on performance, but a syllable frequency effect arose in the error analysis. Taken together, our results provide evidence for a syllable frequency effect in some aphasic subjects with phonological encoding disorders, supporting the idea of a representation of syllables in speech production.

41st Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic-Society, NEW ORLEANS, LA, 2000; International audience; We report the results of a large-scale picture naming experiment in which we evaluated the potential contribution of nine theoretically relevant factors to naming latencies. The experiment included a large number of items and a large sample of participants. In order to make this experiment as similar as possible to classic picture naming experiments, participants were familiarized with the materials during a training session. Speeded naming latencies were determined by a software key on the basis of the digital recording of the responses. The effects of various variables on these latencies were assessed with multiple regression techniques, using a repeated measures design. The interpretation of the observed effects is discussed in relation to previous studies and current views on lexical access during speech production.

Background: Studies on computer assisted therapy (CAT) show encouraging outcomes with chronic aphasic speakers. However, there have been no studies investigating efficacy of CAT carried out with acute in-patients. Aims: This paper aims to evaluate the effects and feasibility of an unsupervised computer-based therapy for anomia in chronic out-patient and acute in-patient aphasic participants. The computerised training programmes were selected according to each participant's anomic syndrome. Methods & Procedures: A multiple single-case design was used with two subgroups of aphasic participants. In the out-patients group (N = 4), CAT sessions were alternated with an equal number of clinical treatment sessions. In a second group of seven in-patients with acute aphasia, CAT was added to daily individual aphasia therapy. Outcomes & Results : In four chronic out-patients, a significant item-specific effect of CAT was shown. For two participants, this effect was similar to the effect of an equal number of individ...

Background: The question of how much speakers plan ahead before they start articulating their message is essential to understand how fluency is ensured during speech production. This question has been largely investigated in healthy speakers. Surprisingly this remains unexplored for brain damaged speakers even though a reduced span of encoding might account for the fact that those impaired speakers often produce scattered speech. Aims: In this study we examine whether the span of encoding is reduced in some left hemisphere brain damaged speakers by taking advantage of two linguistic phenomena which provide an insight into ahead phonological planning. Methods and procedures: First we elicit the production of French sequences involving obligatory liaisons (e.g. /mõ/ and /ami/ produced /mõ.nami/) for which the correct production requires ahead planning at least up to the first phoneme of the following word of the utterance. Second we use tongue twister like sequences in order to elicit contextual phonological errors as phoneme anticipation errors (e.g. bureau vert—green desk—produced /vyRo.vER/) suggest that the speaker has planned ahead before articulating. If brain damaged speakers do present a reduced span of encoding they should both produce a high rate of liaison consonant omissions and a low rate of anticipation contextual phonological errors. Outcome and results: The results on a group of 13 speakers with aphasia and/or apraxia of speech overall show few contextual (syntagmatic) errors despite a high rate of segmental errors whereas the majority of phonological errors produced on the same utterances by healthy speakers were syntagmatic. The speech/language impaired participants also presented a high rate of obligatory liaison consonants omission. Crucially a negative correlation was observed between the rate of phoneme anticipation errors and the rate of liaison consonant omission. Conclusion: These results suggest that some brain damaged speakers present a span of phonological encoding limited to single words and that the use of inter word sandhi phenomena such as French liaison and the analysis of phoneme anticipation errors are valid linguistic tools to inform on the span of encoding.

Referred to as orthographic depth, the degree of consistency of grapheme/phoneme correspondences varies across languages from high in shallow orthographies to low in deep orthographies. The present study investigates the impact of orthographic depth on reading route by analyzing evoked potentials to words in a deep (French) and shallow (German) language presented to highly proficient bilinguals. ERP analyses to German and French words revealed significant topographic modulations 240–280 ms post-stimulus onset, indicative of distinct brain networks engaged in reading over this time window. Source estimations revealed that these effects stemmed from modulations of left insular, inferior frontal and dorsolateral regions (German > French) previously associated to phonological processing. Our results show that reading in a shallow language was associated to a stronger engagement of phonological pathways than reading in a deep language. Thus, the lexical pathways favored in word reading are reinforced by phonological networks more strongly in the shallow than deep orthography.

Introduction: The Orthographic Depth Hypothesis (Katz&Feldman, 1983) posits that different reading routes are engaged depending on the type of grapheme/phoneme correspondence of the language being read. Shallow orthographies with consistent grapheme/phoneme correspondences favor encoding via non-lexical pathways, where each grapheme is sequentially mapped to its corresponding phoneme. In contrast, deep orthographies with inconsistent grapheme/phoneme correspondences favor lexical pathways, where phonemes are retrieved from specialized memory structures. This hypothesis, however, lacks compelling empirical support. The aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of orthographic depth on reading route selection using a within-subject design.Method: We presented the same pseudowords (PWs) to highly proficient bilinguals and manipulated the orthographic depth of PW reading by embedding them among two separated German or French language contexts, implicating respectively shallow or deep orthography. High density electroencephalography was recorded during the task.Results: The topography of the ERPs to identical PWs differed 300-360ms post-stimulus onset when the PWs were read in different orthographic depth context, indicating distinct brain networks engaged in reading during this time window. The brain sources underlying these topographic effects were located within left inferior frontal (German>French), parietal (French>German) and cingular areas (German>French).Conclusion: Reading in a shallow context favors non-lexical pathways, reflected in a stronger engagement of frontal phonological areas in the shallow versus the deep orthographic context. In contrast, reading PW in a deep orthographic context recruits less routine non-lexical pathways, reflected in a stronger engagement of visuo-attentional parietal areas in the deep versus shallow orthographic context. These collective results support a modulation of reading route selection by orthographic depth.

Theories of speech production suggest that phonetic encoding involves an access to stored syllable-sized articulatory plans. Both neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic investigations have reported an effect of the frequency of use of syllabic units, respectively on accuracy and errors in brain-damaged (BD) speakers and on production latencies in nonbrain-damaged speakers. Beyond these convergent results, the fact that the same effects have been reported with BD patients with and without impairment ascribed at the level of phonetic encoding challenges the architecture of speech production models and the interpretation of patients' behaviour. Here we carry out a fully parallel neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic investigation to address whether previous diverging results can be accounted for by methodological differences between neurolinguistic and psycholinguistic studies. We analysed production accuracy in 14 BD speakers and production latencies in 24 non brain-damaged speakers using the same pseudo-word ...

International audience; Depuis une quinzaine d’années, l’enregistrement de l’activité électro-encéphalographique (EEG) suite à un événement donné (c’est-à-dire, les potentiels évoqués, ERP) est devenu un outil essentiel pour les études portant sur la production verbale conceptuellement dirigée. Dans cet article, nous nous proposons de faire une revue de ces travaux en adoptant un point de vue historique et méthodologique. Une première partie est dédiée à la présentation des caractéristiques de cette mesure, son enregistrement et les traitements nécessaires à son utilisation. Une deuxième partie est consacrée à la description des différents paradigmes et leurs évolutions récentes avec une focalisation sur les contraintes issues de la mesure de l’activité électro-physiologique. Enfin, deux exemples d’études utilisant la dénomination immédiate d’images sont rapportés. L’objectif poursuivi est de montrer en quoi, bien que l’enregistrement EEG/ERP n’a pas vocation à remplacer les autres mesures du comportement, il permet d’explorer des hypothèses difficilement testables autrement.