Suchergebnisse

Abstract Theories of autism have proposed that a bias towards low‐level perceptual information, or a featural/surface‐biased information‐processing style, may compromise higher‐level language processing in such individuals. Two experiments, utilizing linguistic stimuli with competing low‐level/perceptual and high‐level/semantic information, tested processing biases in children with autism and matched controls. Whereas children with autism exhibited superior perceptual processing of speech relative to controls, and showed no evidence of either a perceptual or semantic processing bias, controls showed a tendency to process speech semantically. The data provide partial support to the perceptual theories of autism. It is additionally proposed that the pattern of results may reflect different patterns of attentional focusing towards single or multiple stimulus cues in speech between children with autism and controls.

Probably one of the earliest applications of computer technology to logistics was in the area of order processing. When the digital computer began to be introduced into business operations in the middle 1950s, applications were primarily restricted to operations which could be readily routinised. Order processing was such an easily routinised area. Originally the order data had to be processed and input at the location of the central computer. By 1974, a study of US firms found that 90 per cent of the respondents had comparable or more sophisticated computerised order processing systems.

This study investigates the mechanisms responsible for fast changes in processing foreign-accented speech. Event Related brain Potentials (ERPs) were obtained while native speakers of Spanish listened to native and foreign-accented speakers of Spanish. We observed a less positive P200 component for foreign-accented speech relative to native speech comprehension. This suggests that the extraction of spectral information and other important acoustic features was hampered during foreign-accented speech comprehension. However, the amplitude of the N400 component for foreign-accented speech comprehension decreased across the experiment, suggesting the use of a higher level, lexical mechanism. Furthermore, during native speech comprehension, semantic violations in the critical words elicited an N400 effect followed by a late positivity. During foreign-accented speech comprehension, semantic violations only elicited an N400 effect. Overall, our results suggest that, despite a lack of improvement in phonetic discrimination, native listeners experience changes at lexical-semantic levels of processing after brief exposure to foreign-accented speech. Moreover, these results suggest that lexical access, semantic integration and linguistic re-analysis processes are permeable to external factors, such as the accent of the speaker. ; This research was funded by an FPI grant (BES-2012-056668) and two project grants (PSI2011-23033 and Consolider INGENIO CSD2007-00012) awarded by the Spanish Government; by one grant from the Catalan Government (SGR 2009-1521); and by one grant from the European Research Council under the European Community's Seventh Framework (FP7/2007-2013 Cooperation grant agreement 613465-AThEME). CM is supported by the IKERBASQUE institution and the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language. AC is supported by the ICREA institution and the Center for Brain and Cognition.