Understanding fairy tales spoken in dialect: an fMRI study

ABSTRACTDialect comprehension has rarely been studied on the text level. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the neuronal processing of auditory story comprehension was compared in 17 bilectal listeners who spoke Standard German and High Alemannic dialect, and in 19 monolectal listeners who did not speak dialect but only Standard German. 24 fairy tales were translated and recorded by speakers of both varieties. A text-related Extended Language Network (ELN) was more active for intelligible conditions compared to an unintelligible baseline. When High Alemannic fairy tales were presented, bilectal listeners activated the left aTL significantly more than monolectals. This activation was stronger for listeners who rated the dialect more pleasant. It increased over the duration of the stories, but more so for the familiar varieties. These results confirm the importance of the left aTL for text comprehension and add to our understanding of the functional neuroanatomy of dialect comprehension.