This is fascinating in terms of the MMN. Lots of language learning methods ask people to begin by producing sounds correctly, the audio lingua method for example. It is still probably the most commonly used. If people's problems making sounds are because they can't perceive sounds then this is just never going to be effective. Years of research seems to say that it is reception that builds language knowledge and is ignored. Surely research that was able to show that making sounds is connected to having processed them would be pretty hard to ignore.
Also, does the reading task sound like the implicit (procedural) v explicit knowledge distinction? What do others think? Bill Van Patten talks about language-like behavior. People who acquire language by exposure to it when listening and reading develop explicit knowledge and can use it effortlessly. People who learn rules may be able, with an effort to, to produce sentences.
My brain goes into P600 trying to process the speaker’s barrage of OKs and Rights, with the occasional murmur thrown in. After much wasted effort to extract cognitive meaning from this barrage and, having no algorithm to process only meaningful verbal signals in the context of meaningful ones, my brain suggests it has better things to do than process more of this bespattered lecture. I agree and terminate the lecture, adding 50 minutes to my life.
