Although previous research has shown that speakers adapt on the words they use, it remains unclear whether speakers adapt their phonological representations, leading them to perceive new phonemic contrasts following a social interaction. This event-related potential (ERP) study investigates whether the neuronal responses to the perception of the /e/-/ε/ vowel merger in Northern French speakers show evidence for discriminating /e/ and /ε/ phonemes after interacting with a speaker who produced this contrast. Northern French participants engaged in an interactive map task and we measured their ERP responses elicited after the presentation of a last syllable which was either phonemically identical to or different from preceding syllables. There was no evidence for discrimination between /e/ and /ε/ phonemes before the social interaction, while mismatch negativity (MMN) and late responses revealed /e/-/ε/ discrimination after the social interaction. The findings suggest rapid neuronal adaptations of phonemic representations thanks to the social interaction.

Bellegarda, M., Boddaert, G., Dufour, S., Knutsen, D., & Brunellière, A. (2025). Neural evidence for perceiving a vowel merger after a social interaction within a native language. Brain and Language, 261, 105529. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2024.105529