How does inattention affect written and spoken language processing?
Open accessAbstract
The classic cocktail party effect suggests that some, but probably not all levels of language processing can proceed without attention. We used whole-brain functional MRI to investigate how modality-specific and modality-independent language areas are modulated by the withdrawal of attention to another sensory modality (e.g., attending to vision during the presentation of auditory sentences, or vice-versa). We tested the hypotheses that inattention may abolish sentence-level integration and eliminate top-down effects. In both written and spoken modalities, language processing was strongly modulated by the distraction of attention, but this inattention effect varied considerably depending on the area and hierarchical level of language processing. Under inattention, a bottom-up activation remained in early modality-specific areas, particularly in superior temporal spoken-language areas, but the difference between sentences and words lists vanished. Under both attended and unattended conditions, ventral temporal cortices were activated in a top-down manner by spoken language more than by control stimuli, reaching posteriorily the Visual Word Form Area. We conclude that inattention prevents sentence-level syntactic and semantic integration, but preserves some top-down crossmodal processing, plus a large degree of bottom-up modality-specific processing, including a ventral occipito-temporal specialization for letter strings in a known alphabet.
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Speech comprehension requires attention, particularly for higher-level processes such as syntactic integration and reanalysis and drawing inferences.
“Similarly, many studies have shown that speech comprehension requires attention. This holds in particular for higher-level processes, such as syntactic integration and reanalysis and drawing inferences”
From Timing in Conversation (2023) · cites this paper as Cohen et al., 2021
Section 4.1 concludes that integrating words into syntactically and semantically correct phrases requires attention in both spoken and written language. That supports the claim about higher-level syntactic integration, but our copy does not establish the specific examples of syntactic reanalysis or drawing inferences (searched: “reanalysis” and “inferences”). (LLM, conf=0.86)
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- Authors
- Cohen, L., Salondy, P., Pallier, C., & Dehaene, S.
- Affiliations
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Université Paris-Sud (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Cohen, Laurent
- Venue
- Cortex
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-05
- Volume
- 138
- Pages
- 212-227
- ISSN
- 0010-9452 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3132035912
- Cited by
- 29
- References
- 100
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 2.90
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Cortex (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale
- Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives
- Fondation du Collège de France
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Multisensory perception and integration
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Keywords
- inattention, language processing, cross-modal attention, cocktail party effect, sentence processing, spoken language, written language, top-down processing, bottom-up processing, visual word form area, ventral temporal cortex, superior temporal cortex
- MeSH terms
- Brain Mapping, Humans, Language, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Reading, Semantics, Speech Perception, Temporal Lobe
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