Speech reductions change the dynamics of competition during spoken word recognition

Abstract

Three eye-tracking experiments investigated how phonological reductions (e.g., 'puter' for 'computer') modulate phonological competition. Participants listened to sentences extracted from a spontaneous speech corpus and saw four printed words: a target (e.g., 'computer'), a competitor similar to the canonical form (e.g., 'companion'), one similar to the reduced form (e.g., 'pupil'), and an unrelated distractor. In Experiment 1, we presented canonical and reduced forms in a syllabic and in a sentence context. Listeners directed their attention to a similar degree to both competitors independent of the target's spoken form. In Experiment 2, we excluded reduced forms and presented canonical forms only. In such a listening situation, participants showed a clear preference for the "canonical form" competitor. In Experiment 3, we presented canonical forms intermixed with reduced forms in a sentence context, and replicated the competition pattern of Experiment 1. These data suggest that listeners penalize acoustic mismatches less strongly when listening to reduced speech than when listening to fullyarticulated speech. We conclude that flexibility to adjust to speech-intrinsic factors is a key feature of the spoken word recognition system.

Syntactic predictability in the recognition of carefully and casually produced speech.

“…Listeners appear to make use of syntactic information to the same extent when listening to casually produced speech as they do when listening to carefully Syntactic Predictability 27 produced speech. This finding is contrary to the idea that listeners adapt dynamically to the demands of different listening situations (Brouwer et al, 2012b;McQueen & Huettig, 2012).…”

“…Especially under conditions in which the speech stream does not provide reliable cues, contextual cues become an important source of information for identifying the words and segments of speech. This has been demonstrated by studies investigating the recognition of acoustically reduced speech (e.g., Brouwer, Mitterer, & Huettig, 2012b;Ernestus, Baayen, & Schreuder, 2002;Janse & Ernestus, 2011;van de Ven, Ernestus, & Schreuder, 2012). For example, Ernestus et al (2002) presented strongly reduced word forms extracted from a corpus of spontaneous Dutch either in isolation or in context.…”

The VOT Category Boundary in Word-Initial Stops: Counter-Evidence Against Rate Normalization in English Spontaneous Speech

“…A growing body of studies report phonetic and phonological reduction of frequent and/or predictable words and segments, which cannot simply be attributed to fast articulation rates (e.g., Aylett & Turk, 2006;Baese-Berk & Goldrick, 2009;Baran et al, 1977;Bybee, 2000;Ernestus, 2000;Fosler-Lussier & Morgan, 1999;Frank & Jaeger, 2008;Fricke, 2013;Gahl et al, 2012;Jurafsky et al, 2001;Lieberman, 1963;Munson, 2007). Where it is predictable, voicing specifications may not need to be as clearly signaled by VOT for successful communication, considering the facilitative effects of listener expectations on word recognition (e.g., Rubenstein & Pollack, 1963) and listener tolerance for acoustic mismatches in reduced speech (Brouwer et al, 2012). (Of course, other cues to the stop's voicing specification may also be present, as was the case for to with a very short VOT.)…”

The effect of speech situation on the occurrence of reduced word pronunciation variants

“…Future research has to investigate whether this is the case. Preliminary evidence that it is, comes from Brouwer, Mitterer and Huettig (2012), who showed that listeners only take into account that words may be reduced if they hear both full and reduced variants of words. The question is how sensitive the recognition system exactly is and whether it is sensitive, for instance, to the differences between different types of formal spontaneous speech.…”