Work

The time-course of speaking rate compensation: effects of sentential rate and vowel length on voicing judgments

Year: 2014

Type: article

Abstract: Many sources of context information in speech (such as speaking rate) occur either before or after the phonetic cues they influence, yet there is little work examining the time-course of these effects. Here, we investigate how listeners compensate for preceding sentence rate and subsequent vowel length (a secondary cue that has been used as a proxy for speaking rate) when categorizing words varying in voice-onset time (VOT). Participants selected visual objects in a display while their eye-movements were recorded, allowing us to examine when each source of information had an effect on lexical processing. We found that the effect of VOT preceded that of vowel length, suggesting that each cue is used as it becomes available. In a second experiment, we found that, in contrast, the effect of preceding sentence rate occurred simultaneously with VOT, suggesting that listeners interpret VOT relative to preceding rate.

Source: Language Cognition and Neuroscience

DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2014.946427

Authors: Joseph C. Toscano, Bob McMurray

Institutions: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Iowa

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

Awards: The Development of Real Time Spoken and Written Word Recognition: Cognitive Bases of Language and Educational Outcomes, Iowa Cochlear Implant Clinical Research Center VIII