MMN and LDN asymmetries in Polish–English–Norwegian trilingual listeners

Purpose: This paper presents event-related potential (ERP) findings from a study investigating mismatch negativity (MMN) and late discriminative negativity (LDN) response asymmetries in trilingual listeners. The research aimed to explore phonetic representation in multilingual individuals. While theories predicting privative feature specification suggest stronger MMN and (potentially) LDN effects when the standard auditory stimuli have a feature that is specified in the lexical representation, while the deviant lacks it, models like the Perceptual Magnet Model, and the Natural Referent Vowel framework offer competing predictions based on vowel peripherality or prototypicality. Methodology: We employed the Oddball paradigm with a ‘flip-flop’ design to compare neural responses evoked by vowel pairs processed by L1 Polish – L2 English – L3/L n Norwegian listeners. Data and Analysis: EEG data were recorded from 22 trilingual participants using 64 active scalp electrodes. Two linear mixed-effects models were fitted, with the amplitude difference (deviant minus standard, in μV) as the dependent variable. Findings: The results indicated that language status influenced the (a)symmetry of the MMN and LDN effects, with L3/L n Norwegian being the only language where asymmetry was observed for both MMN and LDN, while L1 Polish triggered asymmetry for LDN. These findings are partly consistent with the Featurally Underspecified Lexicon model, the Perceptual Magnet Model, and the Natural Referent Vowel framework. Originality: The study used the ‘flip-flop’ paradigm to investigate MMN and LDN (a)symmetries in the processing of non-native sounds, focusing specifically on multilingual listeners rather than bilinguals.