Neighborhood Density Effects on Spoken Word Recognition by European Portuguese Seven Grade Students

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Selene Vicente ◽  
Sao Luis Castro
Author(s):  
Cynthia G. Clopper ◽  
Janet B. Pierrehumbert ◽  
Terrin N. Tamati

AbstractLexical neighborhood density is a well-known factor affecting phonological categorization in spoken word recognition. The current study examined the interaction between lexical neighborhood density and dialect variation in spoken word recognition in noise. The stimulus materials were real English words produced in two regional American English dialects. To manipulate lexical neighborhood density, target words were selected so that predicted phonological confusions across dialects resulted in real English words in the word-competitor condition and did not result in real English words in the nonword-competitor condition. Word and vowel recognition performance were more accurate in the nonword-competitor condition than the word-competitor condition for both talker dialects. An examination of the responses to specific vowels revealed the role of dialect variation in eliciting this effect. When the predicted phonological confusions were real lexical neighbors, listeners could respond with either the target word or the confusable minimal pair, and were more likely than expected to produce a minimal pair differing from the target by one vowel. When the predicted phonological confusions were not real words, however, the listeners exhibited less lexical competition and responded with the target word or a minimal pair differing by one consonant.


2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
JOANNA C. KIDD ◽  
KATHY K. SHUM ◽  
ANITA M.-Y. WONG ◽  
CONNIE S.-H. HO ◽  
TERRY K. AU

AbstractAuditory processing and spoken word recognition difficulties have been observed in Specific Language Impairment (SLI), raising the possibility that auditory perceptual deficits disrupt word recognition and, in turn, phonological processing and oral language. In this study, fifty-seven kindergarten children with SLI and fifty-three language-typical age-matched controls were assessed with a speech-gating task to measure spoken word recognition, psychophysical tasks to measure auditory Frequency Modulation (FM) detection and Frequency Discrimination (FD), and standardized psychometric tests of phonological processing and oral language. As a group, children with SLI took significantly longer than language-typical controls to recognize words with high neighborhood density, perhaps reflecting subpar phonological representations. FM, but not FD, was significantly worse in SLI. However, while both poorer speech-gating performance and poorer auditory thresholds (FM) were evident in SLI, spoken word recognition did not mediate any relation between auditory perception and either phonological processing or oral language.


2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 496-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Collison ◽  
Benjamin Munson ◽  
Arlene Earley Carney

This study examined spoken word recognition in adults with cochlear implants (CIs) to determine the extent to which linguistic and cognitive abilities predict variability in speech-perception performance. Both a traditional consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC)-repetition measure and a gated-word recognition measure (F. Grosjean, 1996) were used. Stimuli in the gated-word-recognition task varied in neighborhood density. Adults with CIs repeated CVC words less accurately than did age-matched adults with normal hearing sensitivity (NH). In addition, adults with CIs required more acoustic information to recognize gated words than did adults with NH. Neighborhood density had a smaller influence on gated-word recognition by adults with CIs than on recognition by adults with NH. With the exception of 1 outlying participant, standardized, norm-referenced measures of cognitive and linguistic abilities were not correlated with word-recognition measures. Taken together, these results do not support the hypothesis that cognitive and linguistic abilities predict variability in speech-perception performance in a heterogeneous group of adults with CIs. Findings are discussed in light of the potential role of auditory perception in mediating relations among cognitive and linguistic skill and spoken word recognition.


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