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The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptual effects of three types of mispronunciations, affecting the voicing of obstruents, the front-back dimension of stressed vowels, and the stress pattern of words. Subjects were instructed to shadow prose passages containing mispronunciations. Words containing voicing mispronunciations typically were repeated in their original form; words with vowel and stress pattern mispronunciation led instead to other response types. Recent studies of the perception of fluent speech suggest that listeners use both phonetic ("bottom up") and contextual ("top down") information in word recognition. Much of these data are derived from an experimental paradigm in which subjects are asked to respond in various ways to speech containing mispronounced words. This research paradigm was first introduced by Bagley (1900) and reintroduced more recently by Cole (1973) (see also Cole & Rudnicky, 1983). Considerable research has shown that "top down" and "bottom up" information both contribute to word recognition. For example, Marslen-Wilson and Welsh (1978) found that subjects shadowing prose tended to correct mispronunciations without hesitation, particularly if the mispronunciations were relatively minor (changes of a single distinctive feature), if the mispronounced words were highly predictable from context, and if the mispronunciation occurred late rather than early in a word. Cole, Jakimik, and Cooper (1980) found that reaction time in detecting mispronunciations was influenced by the contextually suggested segmentation of a target word. For example, mispronunciations of "drift" were detected more quickly in "snowdrift," where they occurred in the second syllable of a single word, than in "snow drift," where they occurred in the second of two monosyllabic words. In addition, Cole and Jakimik (1978) found that mispronunciation detection was faster when target words were predictable from context-either from words explicitly present or from the general theme of a passage. The relative usefulness to a listener, or the salience, of various types of phonetic information has received somewhat less attention, even though researchers have hypothesized that not all phonetic information

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The present study investigated changes in the prosodic and acoustic-phonetic features of isolated words by four male talkers speaking in quite and in pink noise at a level of 95 dB SPL. Speech samples were collected both with and without an oxygen mask. Changes in duration, fundamental frequency, total energy, and formant center frequency were analyzed. In addition to the expected changes of increased pitch and amplitude associated with speaking in noise without an oxygen mask, significant effects were found (particularly in the formant center frequencies) as a result of using the oxygen mask. When the oxygen mask was employed, no further significant changes were caused by adding noise to the speaking situation.

This experiment was designed to examine the degree of phonological reduction in speech directed at children by adults, as opposed to speech directed at other adults. 8 British mothers were recorded speaking to their 2- to 4-year-old children and to adults in a relaxed home environment. The recordings were analyzed with respect to number of applications of four commonly used phonological rules. It was found that speech to children shows significantly greater phonological reduction in most cases. It is hypothesized that this manifestation of informality may express an affectionate attitude towards the child, thus providing emotional support even if complicating the language-learning task for her or him.