Wichian Sittiprapaporn, Chittin Chindaduangratn, and Naiphinich Kotchabhakdi

pp. 439 - 445

Abstract

The present study was intended to make electrophysiological investigations into the preattentive
perception of native and non-native speech sounds. We recorded the mismatch negativity, elicited by single
syllable change of both native and non-native speech-sound contrasts in tonal languages. EEGs were recorded
and low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) was utilized to explore the neural electrical activity. Our results suggested that the left hemisphere was predominant in the perception of native
speech sounds, whereas the non-native speech sound was perceived predominantly by the right hemisphere,
which may be explained by the specialization in processing the prosodic and emotional components of
speech formed in this hemisphere.