Regional differences in the listener's phonemic inventory affect semantic processing: A mismatch negativity (MMN) study

Using the mismatch negativity (MMN) response, we examined how Standard French and Southern French speakers access the meaning of words ending in /e/ or /epsilon/ vowels which are contrastive in Standard French but not in Southern French. In Standard French speakers, there was a significant difference in the amplitude of the brain response after the deviant-minus-standard subtraction between the fronto-central (FC) and right lateral (RL) recording sites for the final-/epsilon/ word but not the final-/e/ word. In contrast, the difference in the amplitude of the brain response between the FC and RL recording sites did not significantly vary as a function of the word's final vowel in Southern French speakers. Our findings provide evidence that access to lexical meaning in spoken word recognition depends on the speaker's native regional accent. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.