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At the outset of this dissertation one might pose the question why retroflex consonants should still be of interest for phonetics and for phonological theory since ample work on this segmental class already exists. Bhat (1973) conducted a quite extensive study on retroflexion that treated the geographical spread of this class, some phonological processes its members can undergo, and the phonetic motivation for these processes. Furthermore, several phonological representations of retroflexes have been proposed in the framework of Feature Geometry, as in work by Sagey (1986), Pulleyblank (1989), Gnanadesikan (1993), and Clements (2001). Most recently, Steriade (1995, 2001) has discussed the perceptual cues of retroflexes and has argued that the distribution of these cues can account for the phonotactic restrictions on retroflexes and their assimilatory behaviour. Purely phonetically oriented studies such as Dixit (1990) and Simonsen, Moen & Cowen (2000) have shown the large articulatory variation that can be found for retroflexes and hint at the insufficiency of existing definitions.
The present work reports two experiments on brain electric correlates of cognitive and emotional functions. (1) Studying paranormal belief, 35-channel resting EEG (10 believers and 13 skeptics) was analyzed with "Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography" (LORETA) in seven frequency bands. LORETA gravity centers of all bands shifted to the left in believers vs. sceptics, and showed that believers had stronger left fronto-temporo-parietal activity than skeptics. Self-rating of affective attitude showed believers to be less negative than skeptics. The observed EEG lateralization agreed with the ‘valence hypothesis’ that posits predominant left hemispheric processing for positive emotions. (2) Studying emotions, positive and negative emotion words were presented to 21 subjects while "Event-Related Potentials" (ERPs) were recorded. During word presentation (450 ms), 13 microstates (steps of information processing) were identified. Three microstates showed different potential maps for positive vs. negative words; LORETA functional imaging showed stronger activity in microstate #4 (106-122 ms) for positive words right anterior, for negative words left central; in #6 (138-166 ms) for positive words left anterior, for negative words left posterior; in #7 (166-198 ms), for positive words right anterior, for negative words right central. In conclusion: during word processing, the extraction of emotion content starts as early as 106 ms after stimulus onset; the brain identifies emotion content repeatedly in three separate, brief microstate epochs; and, this processing of emotion content in the three microstates involves different brain mechanisms to represent the distinction positive vs. negative valence.