Considerable work has investigated similarities between the processing of music and language, but it remains unclear whether typical, genuine music can influence speech processing via cross-domain priming. To investigate this, we measured ERPs to musical phrases and to syntactically ambiguous Chinese phrases that could be disambiguated by early or late prosodic boundaries. Musical primes also had either early or late prosodic boundaries and we asked participants to judge whether the prime and target have the same structure. Within musical phrases, prosodic boundaries elicited reduced N1 and enhanced P2 components (relative to the no-boundary condition) and musical phrases with late boundaries exhibited a closure positive shift (CPS) component. More importantly, primed target phrases elicited a smaller CPS compared to non-primed phrases, regardless of the type of ambiguous phrase. These results suggest that prosodic priming can occur across domains, supporting the existence of common neural processes in music and language processing.

The structure of human language is inherently hierarchical. The left posterior inferior frontal gyrus (LpIFG) is proposed to be a core region for constructing syntactic hierarchies. However, it remains unclear whether LpIFG plays a causal role in syntactic processing in Mandarin Chinese and whether its contribution depends on syntactic complexity, working memory, or both. We addressed these questions by applying inhibitory continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) over LpIFG. Thirty-two participants processed sentences containing embedded relative clauses (i.e., complex syntactic processing), syntactically simpler coordinated sentences (i.e., simple syntactic processing), and non-hierarchical word lists (i.e., word list processing) after receiving real or sham cTBS. We found that cTBS significantly increased the coefficient of variation, a representative index of processing stability, in complex syntactic processing (esp., when subject relative clause was embedded) but not in the other two conditions. No significant changes in d\' and reaction time were detected in these conditions. The findings suggest that (a) inhibitory effect of cTBS on the LpIFG might be prominent in perturbing the complex syntactic processing stability but subtle in altering the processing quality; and (b) the causal role of the LpIFG seems to be specific for syntactic processing rather than working memory capacity, further evidencing their separability in LpIFG. Collectively, these results support the notion of the LpIFG as a core region for complex syntactic processing across languages.

UNASSIGNED: Research has indicated that language and executive function relate closely to first-order false belief reasoning, yet their roles in second-order false belief reasoning are under-explored, and their interplay in theory of mind development remains obscure.
UNASSIGNED: This study assessed 160 Mandarin-speaking preschoolers\' and early primary schoolers\' language, executive function, and theory of mind abilities to examine the unique roles and interplay of language and executive function in first-order and second-order false belief reasoning.
UNASSIGNED: Results showed that language significantly uniquely predicted the children\'s first-order as well as second-order false belief reasoning when controlling for the effects of age and executive function. Although executive function significantly predicted first-order FB reasoning when controlling for age, it was no longer a significant predictor of first-order FB reasoning when language was included in the model. However, executive function played a significant unique role in second-order FB reasoning when controlling for the effects of age and language.
UNASSIGNED: The current findings suggest that language plays a greater role than executive function in Mandarin-speaking children\'s theory of mind development and the contributors to theory of mind development vary in different levels of false belief reasoning.

The event-related potentials (ERPs) technique represents a newly developed methodology in cognitive neuroscience and has significantly extended the scope of linguistic studies, offering valuable insights into cognitive processes related to language. While extant literature reviews have addressed specific facets of ERP research on language processing, a comprehensive overview of this domain remains notably absent. This study aims to fill this gap by pioneering a mapping-knowledge-domain analysis of ERP research on language processing using Citespace, a visualized bibliometric software. The current study conducted a meticulous survey and evaluation of relevant literature extracted from the Web of Science core collection. Initially, this study outlines the spatial-temporal distribution within this domain. Subsequently, employing document co-citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, cluster analysis, and burst detection analysis, this study delved deeper into the research landscape. Findings reveal that key areas in ERP research on language processing predominantly focus on sentence comprehension, reading comprehension, and mismatch negativity, with notable emphasis on topics such as speech perception, temporal dynamics, and working memory. The current study advocates for future investigations to concentrate on larger linguistic units, explore the integration of ERP components and their functional significance, and scrutinize individual differences among participants. These directions are imperative for advancing the understanding of language processing mechanisms.

Lip language recognition urgently needs wearable and easy-to-use interfaces for interference-free and high-fidelity lip-reading acquisition and to develop accompanying data-efficient decoder-modeling methods. Existing solutions suffer from unreliable lip reading, are data hungry, and exhibit poor generalization. Here, we propose a wearable lip language decoding technology that enables interference-free and high-fidelity acquisition of lip movements and data-efficient recognition of fluent lip language based on wearable motion capture and continuous lip speech movement reconstruction. The method allows us to artificially generate any wanted continuous speech datasets from a very limited corpus of word samples from users. By using these artificial datasets to train the decoder, we achieve an average accuracy of 92.0% across individuals (n = 7) for actual continuous and fluent lip speech recognition for 93 English sentences, even observing no training burn on users because all training datasets are artificially generated. Our method greatly minimizes users\' training/learning load and presents a data-efficient and easy-to-use paradigm for lip language recognition.

Embodied cognition holds that one\'s body, actions, perceptions, and situations are integrated into the cognitive process and emphasizes the fact that sensorimotor systems play a role in language comprehension. Previous studies verified the embodied effect in literal language processing but few of them paid attention to metaphors in embodied cognition. The present study aims to explore the embodied effect in the comprehension of Chinese action-verb metaphor. Participants watched a video containing icons and corresponding actions to learn the relationship between them and how to perform these actions in the learning phase and in the test phase, a series of action-describing metaphor phrases were presented to participants with either the icons as primes or no prime at all. The results confirmed the embodied effect as the reaction times (RTs) were significantly shorter when action prime matched the action-verb in the following action-verb metaphor than that of no-prime condition, which are consistent with the facilitation observed in previous relevant studies in embodied cognition. In conclusion, this study verified the embodied effect in the comprehension of Chinese action-verb metaphor, offering further support to embodied cognition and providing a new interpretation for the metaphoric meaning construction of Chinese action-verbs.

Previous research has demonstrated cognate translation priming effects in masked priming lexical decision tasks (LDTs) even when a bilingual\'s two languages have different scripts. Because those effect sizes are normally larger than with noncognates, the effects have been partially attributed to the impact of prime-target phonological similarity. The present research extended that work by examining priming effects when using triple different-script cognates, i.e., /ka1 feɪ1/-coffee-コーヒー/KoRhiR/. Specifically, masked cognate priming effects were examined in six different priming directions (i.e., L1↔L2, L1↔L3, and L2↔L3) for Chinese-English-Japanese trilinguals using LDTs. Significant priming effects were observed only when the primes were from the stronger language. This asymmetric pattern suggests that the phonological similarity of cognate primes only facilitates the processing of different-script triple cognates to the extent that the processing of the prime is robust enough to make phonology available before target processing is finished.

The quality of speech input influences the efficiency of L1 and L2 acquisition. This study examined modifications in infant-directed speech (IDS) and foreigner-directed speech (FDS) in Standard Mandarin-a tonal language-and explored how IDS and FDS features were manifested in disyllabic words and a longer discourse. The study aimed to determine which characteristics of IDS and FDS were enhanced in comparison with adult-directed speech (ADS), and how IDS and FDS differed when measured in a common set of acoustic parameters. For words, it was found that tone-bearing vowel duration, mean and range of fundamental frequency (F0), and the lexical tone contours were enhanced in IDS and FDS relative to ADS, except for the dipping Tone 3 that exhibited an unexpected lowering in FDS, but no modification in IDS when compared with ADS. For the discourse, different aspects of temporal and F0 enhancements were emphasized in IDS and FDS: the mean F0 was higher in IDS whereas the total discourse duration was greater in FDS. These findings add to the growing literature on L1 and L2 speech input characteristics and their role in language acquisition.

To explore the clinical efficacy of scalp electroacupuncture combined with rehabilitation training for aphasia after head injury, and analyze its effect on patients\' language function and quality of life. Our hospital randomly enrolled 100 aphasia patients caused by head injury treated from March 2020 to March 2022 as the experimental object and divided them into the control group and experimental group, with 50 cases in each group. The general rehabilitation training was performed to the control group and the scalp electroacupuncture combined with rehabilitation training was performed to the experimental group to compare their mini-mental state examination scores, communicative activities in daily living scores, aphasia battery of Chinese scores, quality of life scores, mental status scale in nonpsychiatric settings scores, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale scores, effective rates, satisfaction of patients, and adverse reaction rates. In the between-group comparison, the patients in the experimental group had significantly higher mini-mental state examination scores, communicative activities in daily living scores, aphasia battery of Chinese scores, quality of life scores, effective rates, and satisfaction, and significantly lower mental status scale in nonpsychiatric settings scores, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale scores and adverse reaction rates, which was statistically significant (P < .05 in all cases). The combination treatment of scalp electroacupuncture and rehabilitation training can effectively improve the language function and quality of life of patients with aphasia after head injury and remarkably enhance the treatment effect.

This study aims to investigate the effect of detoxification on acoustic features of Mandarin speech. Speech recordings were collected from 66 male abstinent heroin users with different durations of drug detoxification, specifically early abstinent users with a detoxification duration of less than 2 years, sustained abstinent users with 2 years of detoxification, and long-term abstinent users with a detoxification duration of more than 2 years. The results of the acoustic analyses showed that early abstinent users exhibited lower loudness, relative energies of F1, F2, and F3, higher H1-A3, and fewer loudness peaks per second, as well as a longer average duration of unvoiced segments, compared to the sustained and long-term abstinent users. The findings suggest that detoxification may lead to a rehabilitation process in the speech production of abstinent heroin users (e.g., less vocal hoarseness). This study not only provides valuable insights into the effect of detoxification on speech production but also provides a theoretical basis for the speech rehabilitation and detoxification treatment of heroin users.