No compelling evidence against feedback  in spoken word recognition

Norris et al.'s claim that feedback is unnecessary is compromised by (1) a questionable application of Occam's razor, given strong evidence for feedback in perception; (2) an idealization of the speech recognition problem that simplifies those aspects of the input that create conditions where feedback is useful; (3) Norris et al.'s use of decision nodes that incorporate feedback to model some important empirical results; and (4) problematic linking hypotheses between crucial simulations and behavioral data.

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Online activation of L1 Danish orthography enhances spoken word recognition of Swedish

Nordic Journal of Linguistics ◽

10.1017/s0332586521000056 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-19

Author(s):

Anja Schüppert ◽

Johannes C. Ziegler ◽

Holger Juul ◽

Charlotte Gooskens

Keyword(s):

Word Recognition ◽

Strong Evidence ◽

Spoken Word Recognition ◽

First Language ◽

Stimulus Onset ◽

Spoken Word ◽

Orthographic Knowledge ◽

Brain Potentials ◽

Brain Responses

Abstract It has been reported that speakers of Danish understand more Swedish than vice versa. One reason for this asymmetry might be that spoken Swedish is closer to written Danish than vice versa. We hypothesise that literate speakers of Danish use their orthographic knowledge of Danish to decode spoken Swedish. To test this hypothesis, first-language (L1) Danish speakers were confronted with spoken Swedish in a translation task. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were elicited to study the online brain responses during decoding operations. Results showed that ERPs to words whose Swedish pronunciation was inconsistent with the Danish spelling were significantly more negative-going than ERPs to words whose Swedish pronunciation was consistent with the Danish spelling between 750 ms and 900 ms after stimulus onset. Together with higher word-recognition scores for consistent items, our data provide strong evidence that online activation of L1 orthography enhances word recognition of spoken Swedish in literate speakers of Danish.

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Why not model spoken word recognition instead of phoneme monitoring?

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x00493246 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 23 (3) ◽

pp. 349-350

Author(s):

Jean Vroomen ◽

Beatrice de Gelder

Keyword(s):

Speech Recognition ◽

Word Recognition ◽

Spoken Word Recognition ◽

Spoken Word ◽

Detailed Account ◽

Phoneme Recognition ◽

Decision Stage ◽

Recognition Process ◽

Monitoring Task ◽

Phoneme Monitoring

Norris, McQueen & Cutler present a detailed account of the decision stage of the phoneme monitoring task. However, we question whether this contributes to our understanding of the speech recognition process itself, and we fail to see why phonotactic knowledge is playing a role in phoneme recognition.

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