Fig. 1.

Schematic representations of stimulus manipulations used to create the conditions in the fMRI experiment (see text for details). The top panels show examples of isochronous and anisochronous sequences. The middle panels show spectrograms for syllable sequences in the natural and spectrally rotated conditions. The bottom panels show examples of low and high entropy sequences, based on degree of correlation between pitch (fundamental frequency, f0) of successive intervals (highly correlated and approaching a sine wave contour in the low entropy condition; uncorrelated in the high entropy condition). Using these manipulations, 8 types of experimental trials were created: (1) isochronous—natural speech—high entropy; (2) isochronous—natural speech—low entropy; (3) isochronous—rotated speech—high entropy; (4) isochronous—rotated speech—low entropy; (5) anisochronous—natural speech—high entropy; (6) anisochronous—natural speech—low entropy; (7) anisochronous—rotated speech—high entropy; and (8) anisochronous—rotated speech—low entropy. Combining these trial types allowed contrasts between the conditions representing a particular experimental manipulation while balancing for each of the other manipulations (see text).