scholarly journals A prerequisite to L1 homophone effects in L2 spoken-word recognition

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Satsuki Nakai ◽  
Shane Lindsay ◽  
Mitsuhiko Ota
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
First Language ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Lexical Activation ◽  
Auditory Word ◽  
Processing Abilities ◽  
Abstract Level ◽  
Vowel Phoneme

When both members of a phonemic contrast in L2 (second language) are perceptually mapped to a single phoneme in one’s L1 (first language), L2 words containing a member of that contrast can spuriously activate L2 words in spoken-word recognition. For example, upon hearing cattle, Dutch speakers of English are reported to experience activation of kettle, as L1 Dutch speakers perceptually map the vowel in the two English words to a single vowel phoneme in their L1. In an auditory word-learning experiment using Greek and Japanese speakers of English, we asked whether such cross-lexical activation in L2 spoken-word recognition necessarily involves inaccurate perception by the L2 listeners, or can also arise from interference from L1 phonology at an abstract level, independent of the listeners’ phonetic processing abilities. Results suggest that spurious activation of L2 words containing L2-specific contrasts in spoken-word recognition is contingent on the L2 listeners’ inadequate phonetic processing abilities.

Orthographic activation in spoken word recognition of L2 phonological variants

2020 ◽  
pp. 026765832096825
Author(s):  
Jeong-Im Han ◽  
Song Yi Kim
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
First Language ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Advanced Level ◽  
Spoken Words ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Prime Target

The present study investigated the influence of orthographic input on the recognition of second language (L2) spoken words with phonological variants, when first language (L1) and L2 have different orthographic structures. Lexical encoding for intermediate-to-advanced level Mandarin learners of Korean was assessed using masked cross-modal and within-modal priming tasks. Given that Korean has obstruent nasalization in the syllable coda, prime target pairs were created with and without such phonological variants, but spellings that were provided in the cross-modal task reflected their unaltered, nonnasalized forms. The results indicate that when L2 learners are exposed to transparent alphabetic orthography, they do not show a particular cost for spoken word recognition of L2 phonological variants as long as the variation is regular and rule-governed.

Re-reconsidering the role of temporal order in spoken word recognition

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (11) ◽  
pp. 2574-2583 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Gregg ◽  
Albrecht W Inhoff ◽  
Cynthia M Connine
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Coarse Grain ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Visual World Paradigm ◽  
Lexical Activation ◽  
Stimulus Materials

Spoken word recognition models incorporate the temporal unfolding of word information by assuming that positional match constrains lexical activation. Recent findings challenge the linearity constraint. In the visual world paradigm, Toscano, Anderson, and McMurray observed that listeners preferentially viewed a picture of a target word’s anadrome competitor (e.g., competitor bus for target sub) compared with phonologically unrelated distractors (e.g., well) or competitors sharing an overlapping vowel (e.g., sun). Toscano et al. concluded that spoken word recognition relies on coarse grain spectral similarity for mapping spoken input to a lexical representation. Our experiments aimed to replicate the anadrome effect and to test the coarse grain similarity account using competitors without vowel position overlap (e.g., competitor leaf for target flea). The results confirmed the original effect: anadrome competitor fixation curves diverged from unrelated distractors approximately 275 ms after the onset of the target word. In contrast, the no vowel position overlap competitor did not show an increase in fixations compared with the unrelated distractors. The contrasting results for the anadrome and no vowel position overlap items are discussed in terms of theoretical implications of sequential match versus coarse grain similarity accounts of spoken word recognition. We also discuss design issues (repetition of stimulus materials and display parameters) concerning the use of the visual world paradigm in making inferences about online spoken word recognition.

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 Spoken word recognition in a second language: The importance of phonetic details

2021 ◽  
pp. 026765832110306
Author(s):  
Félix Desmeules-Trudel ◽  
Tania S. Zamuner
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Recognition ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Lexical Representations ◽  
Canadian French ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Minimal Word ◽  
Vowel Nasalization

Spoken word recognition depends on variations in fine-grained phonetics as listeners decode speech. However, many models of second language (L2) speech perception focus on units such as isolated syllables, and not on words. In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigated how fine-grained phonetic details (i.e. duration of nasalization on contrastive and coarticulatory nasalized vowels in Canadian French) influenced spoken word recognition in an L2, as compared to a group of native (L1) listeners. Results from L2 listeners (English-native speakers) indicated that fine-grained phonetics impacted the recognition of words, i.e. they were able to use nasalization duration variability in a way similar to L1-French listeners, providing evidence that lexical representations can be highly specified in an L2. Specifically, L2 listeners were able to distinguish minimal word pairs (differentiated by the presence of phonological vowel nasalization in French) and were able to use variability in a way approximating L1-French listeners. Furthermore, the robustness of the French “nasal vowel” category in L2 listeners depended on age of exposure. Early bilinguals displayed greater sensitivity to some ambiguity in the stimuli than late bilinguals, suggesting that early bilinguals had greater sensitivity to small variations in the signal and thus better knowledge of the phonetic cue associated with phonological vowel nasalization in French, similarly to L1 listeners.

scholarly journals LDL-AURIS: Error-driven Learning in Modeling Spoken Word Recognition

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elnaz Shafaei-Bajestan ◽  
Masoumeh Moradipour-Tari ◽  
Peter Uhrig ◽  
R. H. Baayen
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
High Dimensional ◽  
Excellent Performance ◽  
Auditory Word ◽  
Auditory Word Recognition ◽  
Multivariate Multiple Regression ◽  
Isolated Word ◽  
Temporal Granularity

A computational model for auditory word recognition is presented that enhances the model of Arnold et al. (2017). Real-valued features are extracted from the speech signal instead of discrete features. One-hot encoding for words’ meanings is replaced by real-valued semantic vectors, adding a small amount of noise to safeguard discriminability. Instead of learning with Rescorla-Wagner updating, we use multivariate multiple regression, which captures discrimination learning at the limit of experience. These new design features substantially improve prediction accuracy for words extracted from spontaneous conversations. They also provide enhanced temporal granularity, enabling the modeling of cohort-like effects. Clustering with t-SNE shows that the acoustic form space captures phone-like similarities and differences. Thus, wide learning with high-dimensional vectors and no hidden layers, and no abstract mediating phone-like representations is not only possible but achieves excellent performance that approximates the lower bound of human accuracy on the challenging task of isolated word recognition.

Grammatical Context Restricts Lexical Activation in Early Stages of Spoken Word Recognition

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Strand ◽  
Andrea M. Simenstad ◽  
Jeffrey J. Berg ◽  
Joseph A. Slote
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Lexical Activation

scholarly journals ERPs Reflect Lexical Identification in Word Fragment Priming

2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 541-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia K. Friedrich ◽  
Sonja A. Kotz ◽  
Angela D. Friederici ◽  
Thomas C. Gunter
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Mental Lexicon ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Word Fragment ◽  
Target Pair ◽  
Auditory Word ◽  
Target Experiment ◽  
Behavioral Evidence ◽  
Prime Target

Behavioral evidence suggests that spoken word recognition involves the temporary activation of multiple entries in a listener's mental lexicon. This phenomenon can be demonstrated in cross-modal word fragment priming (CMWP). In CMWP, an auditory word fragment (prime) is immediately followed by a visual word or pseudoword (target). Experiment 1 investigated ERPs for targets presented in this paradigm. Half of the targets were congruent with the prime (e.g., in the prime-target pair: AM-AMBOSS [anvil]), half were not (e.g., AM-PENSUM [pensum]). Lexical entries of the congruent targets should receive activation from the prime. Thus, lexical identification of these targets should be facilitated. An ERP effect named P350, two frontal negative ERP deflections, and the N400 were sensitive to prime-target congruency. In Experiment 2, the relation of the formerly observed ERP effects to processes in a modality-independent mental lexicon was investigated by presenting primes visually. Only the P350 effect could be replicated across different fragment lengths. Therefore, the P350 is discussed as a correlate of lexical identification in a modality-independent mental lexicon.

scholarly journals Implicit Processing of Phonotactic Cues: Evidence from Electrophysiological and Vascular Responses

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (7) ◽  
pp. 1752-1764 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Rossi ◽  
Ina B. Jürgenson ◽  
Adriana Hanulíková ◽  
Silke Telkemeyer ◽  
Isabell Wartenburger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Near Infrared ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Hemispheric Dominance ◽  
N400 Effect ◽  
Implicit Processing ◽  
Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Lexical Activation ◽  
Activation Mechanisms

Spoken word recognition is achieved via competition between activated lexical candidates that match the incoming speech input. The competition is modulated by prelexical cues that are important for segmenting the auditory speech stream into linguistic units. One such prelexical cue that listeners rely on in spoken word recognition is phonotactics. Phonotactics defines possible combinations of phonemes within syllables or words in a given language. The present study aimed at investigating both temporal and topographical aspects of the neuronal correlates of phonotactic processing by simultaneously applying ERPs and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Pseudowords, either phonotactically legal or illegal with respect to the participants' native language, were acoustically presented to passively listening adult native German speakers. ERPs showed a larger N400 effect for phonotactically legal compared to illegal pseudowords, suggesting stronger lexical activation mechanisms in phonotactically legal material. fNIRS revealed a left hemispheric network including fronto-temporal regions with greater response to phonotactically legal pseudowords than to illegal pseudowords. This confirms earlier hypotheses on a left hemispheric dominance of phonotactic processing most likely due to the fact that phonotactics is related to phonological processing and represents a segmental feature of language comprehension. These segmental linguistic properties of a stimulus are predominantly processed in the left hemisphere. Thus, our study provides first insights into temporal and topographical characteristics of phonotactic processing mechanisms in a passive listening task. Differential brain responses between known and unknown phonotactic rules thus supply evidence for an implicit use of phonotactic cues to guide lexical activation mechanisms.

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