Work

Gradient sensitivity to within-category variation in words and syllables.

Year: 2008

Type: article

Abstract: Five experiments monitored eye movements in phoneme and lexical identification tasks to examine the effect of within-category subphonetic variation on the perception of stop consonants. Experiment 1 demonstrated gradient effects along voice-onset time (VOT) continua made from natural speech, replicating results with synthetic speech (B. McMurray, M. K. Tanenhaus, & R. N. Aslin, 2002). Experiments 2-5 used synthetic VOT continua to examine effects of response alternatives (2 vs. 4), task (lexical vs. phoneme decision), and type of token (word vs. consonant-vowel). A gradient effect of VOT in at least one half of the continuum was observed in all conditions. These results suggest that during online spoken word recognition, lexical competitors are activated in proportion to their continuous distance from a category boundary. This gradient processing may allow listeners to anticipate upcoming acoustic-phonetic information in the speech signal and dynamically compensate for acoustic variability.

Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance

DOI: 10.1037/a0011747

Authors: Bob McMurray, Richard N. Aslin, Michael K. Tanenhaus, Michael J. Spivey, Dana Subik

Institutions: University of Iowa, University of Rochester, Cornell University

Language: English

Topic: Phonetics and Phonology Research

Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Awards: Time course of spoken word recognition, Time Course of Spoken Word Recognition, G4364556895, The Development of Real Time Spoken and Written Word Recognition: Cognitive Bases of Language and Educational Outcomes, Temporal Integration of Acoustic Detail in Speech