Hearing taboo words can result in early talker effects in word recognition for female listeners

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 435-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha E. Tuft ◽  
Conor T. MᶜLennan ◽  
Maura L. Krestar
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Fast Processing ◽  
Taboo Words

Previous spoken word recognition research using the long-term repetition-priming paradigm found performance costs for stimuli mismatching in talker identity. That is, when words were repeated across the two blocks, and the identity of the talker changed reaction times (RTs) were slower than when the repeated words were spoken by the same talker. Such performance costs, or talker effects, followed a time course, occurring only when processing was relatively slow. More recent research suggests that increased explicit and implicit attention towards the talkers can result in talker effects even during relatively fast processing. The purpose of the current study was to examine whether word meaning would influence the pattern of talker effects in an easy lexical decision task and, if so, whether results would differ depending on whether the presentation of neutral and taboo words was mixed or blocked. Regardless of presentation, participants responded to taboo words faster than neutral words. Furthermore, talker effects for the female talker emerged when participants heard both taboo and neutral words (consistent with an attention-based hypothesis), but not for participants that heard only taboo or only neutral words (consistent with the time-course hypothesis). These findings have important implications for theoretical models of spoken word recognition.

scholarly journals Accent modulates access to word meaning: Evidence for a speaker-model account of spoken word recognition

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenguang Garry Cai ◽  
Rebecca Anne Gilbert ◽  
Matthew H. Davis ◽  
M. Gareth Gaskell ◽  
Lauren Farrar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Word Association ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Model Account ◽  
Relevant Word

Speech carries accent information relevant to determining the speaker’s linguistic and social background. A series of web-based experiments demonstrate that accent cues can modulate access to word meaning. In Experiments 1-3, British participants were more likely to retrieve the American dominant meaning (e.g., hat meaning of “bonnet”) in a word association task if they heard the words in an American than a British accent. In addition, results from a speeded semantic decision task (Experiment 4) and sentence comprehension task (Experiment 5) confirm that accent modulates on-line meaning retrieval such that comprehension of ambiguous words is easier when the relevant word meaning is dominant in the speaker’s dialect. Critically, neutral-accent speech items, created by morphing British- and American-accented recordings, were interpreted in a similar way to accented words when embedded in a context of accented words (Experiment 2). This finding indicates that listeners do not use accent to guide meaning retrieval on a word-by-word basis; instead they use accent information to determine the dialectic identity of a speaker and then use their experience of that dialect to guide meaning access for all words spoken by that person. These results motivate a speaker-model account of spoken word recognition in which comprehenders determine key characteristics of their interlocutor and use this knowledge to guide word meaning access.

Tracking the time course of lexical access in spoken word recognition

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul D. Allopenna ◽  
James S. Magnuson ◽  
Michael K. Tanenhaus
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Lexical Access ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word

scholarly journals Unstressed Vowel Reduction Across Majorcan Catalan Dialects: Production and Spoken Word Recognition

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 430-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miquel Llompart ◽  
Miquel Simonet
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Lexical Representations ◽  
Production Study ◽  
Speech Performance

This study investigates the production and auditory lexical processing of words involved in a patterned phonological alternation in two dialects of Catalan spoken on the island of Majorca, Spain. One of these dialects, that of Palma, merges /ɔ/ and /o/ as [o] in unstressed position, and it maintains /u/ as an independent category, [u]. In the dialect of Sóller, a small village, speakers merge unstressed /ɔ/, /o/, and /u/ to [u]. First, a production study asks whether the discrete, rule-based descriptions of the vowel alternations provided in the dialectological literature are able to account adequately for these processes: are mergers complete? Results show that mergers are complete with regards to the main acoustic cue to these vowel contrasts, that is, F1. However, minor differences are maintained for F2 and vowel duration. Second, a lexical decision task using cross-modal priming investigates the strength with which words produced in the phonetic form of the neighboring (versus one’s own) dialect activate the listeners’ lexical representations during spoken word recognition: are words within and across dialects accessed efficiently? The study finds that listeners from one of these dialects, Sóller, process their own and the neighboring forms equally efficiently, while listeners from the other one, Palma, process their own forms more efficiently than those of the neighboring dialect. This study has implications for our understanding of the role of lifelong linguistic experience on speech performance.

scholarly journals Syllable Frequency and Spoken Word Recognition

2016 ◽  
Vol 119 (1) ◽  
pp. 263-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julio González-Alvarez ◽  
María-Angeles Palomar-García
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Inhibitory Effect ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Facilitatory Effect ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Syllable Frequency ◽  
Relevant Role

Research has shown that syllables play a relevant role in lexical access in Spanish, a shallow language with a transparent syllabic structure. Syllable frequency has been shown to have an inhibitory effect on visual word recognition in Spanish. However, no study has examined the syllable frequency effect on spoken word recognition. The present study tested the effect of the frequency of the first syllable on recognition of spoken Spanish words. A sample of 45 young adults (33 women, 12 men; M = 20.4, SD = 2.8; college students) performed an auditory lexical decision on 128 Spanish disyllabic words and 128 disyllabic nonwords. Words were selected so that lexical and first syllable frequency were manipulated in a within-subject 2 × 2 design, and six additional independent variables were controlled: token positional frequency of the second syllable, number of phonemes, position of lexical stress, number of phonological neighbors, number of phonological neighbors that have higher frequencies than the word, and acoustical durations measured in milliseconds. Decision latencies and error rates were submitted to linear mixed models analysis. Results showed a typical facilitatory effect of the lexical frequency and, importantly, an inhibitory effect of the first syllable frequency on reaction times and error rates.

scholarly journals Effects of Age, Word Frequency, and Noise on the Time Course of Spoken Word Recognition

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin J. Van Engen ◽  
Avanti Dey ◽  
Nichole Runge ◽  
Brent Spehar ◽  
Mitchell S. Sommers ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Word Recognition ◽  
Target Word ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Lexical Activation

This study assessed the effects of age, word frequency, and background noise on the time course of lexical activation during spoken word recognition. Participants (41 young adults and 39 older adults) performed a visual world word recognition task while we monitored their gaze position. On each trial, four phonologically unrelated pictures appeared on the screen. A target word was presented auditorily following a carrier phrase (“Click on ________”), at which point participants were instructed to use the mouse to click on the picture that corresponded to the target word. High- and low-frequency words were presented in quiet to half of the participants. The other half heard the words in a low level of noise in which the words were still readily identifiable. Results showed that, even in the absence of phonological competitors in the visual array, high-frequency words were fixated more quickly than low-frequency words by both listener groups. Young adults were generally faster to fixate on targets compared to older adults, but the pattern of interactions among noise, word frequency, and listener age showed that older adults’ lexical activation largely matches that of young adults in a modest amount of noise.

scholarly journals The Roles of Consonant, Rime, and Tone in Mandarin Spoken Word Recognition: An Eye-Tracking Study

2022 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ting Zou ◽  
Yutong Liu ◽  
Huiting Zhong
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Continuous Mapping ◽  
Phonological Similarity ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Relative Role ◽  
Growth Curve Analysis ◽  
Mapping Models

This study investigated the relative role of sub-syllabic components (initial consonant, rime, and tone) in spoken word recognition of Mandarin Chinese using an eye-tracking experiment with a visual world paradigm. Native Mandarin speakers (all born and grew up in Beijing) were presented with four pictures and an auditory stimulus. They were required to click the picture according to the sound stimulus they heard, and their eye movements were tracked during this process. For a target word (e.g., tang2 “candy”), nine conditions of competitors were constructed in terms of the amount of their phonological overlap with the target: consonant competitor (e.g., ti1 “ladder”), rime competitor (e.g., lang4 “wave”), tone competitor (e.g., niu2 “cow”), consonant plus rime competitor (e.g., tang1”soup”), consonant plus tone competitor (e.g., tou2 “head”), rime plus tone competitor (e.g., yang2 “sheep”), cohort competitor (e.g., ta3 “tower”), cohort plus tone competitor (e.g., tao2 “peach”), and baseline competitor (e.g., xue3 “snow”). A growth curve analysis was conducted with the fixation to competitors, targets, and distractors, and the results showed that (1) competitors with consonant or rime overlap can be adequately activated, while tone overlap plays a weaker role since additional tonal information can strengthen the competitive effect only when it was added to a candidate that already bears much phonological similarity with the target. (2) Mandarin words are processed in an incremental way in the time course of word recognition since different partially overlapping competitors could be activated immediately; (3) like the pattern found in English, both cohort and rime competitors were activated to compete for lexical activation, but these two competitors were not temporally distinctive and mainly differed in the size of their competitive effects. Generally, the gradation of activation based on the phonological similarity between target and candidates found in this study was in line with the continuous mapping models and may reflect a strategy of native speakers shaped by the informative characteristics of the interaction among different sub-syllabic components.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document