Spoken Word Recognition and Production

Abstract

Most language behavior consists of speaking and listening. However, the recognition and production of spoken words have not always been central topics in psycholinguistic research. Considering the two fields together in one chapter reveals differences and similarities. Spokcn-word recognition studies began in earnest in the 1970s, prompted on one hand by the develop ment of laboratory tasks involving auditory presentation and on the other hand by the realization that the growing body of data on visual word recognition (see Scidenbcrg, Chapter 5, this volume) did not necessarily apply to listening, bccausc of the temporal nature of speech signals. This recognition research has been, to a great extent, model driven. Spokcnword production research, on the other hand, has a longer history but a less intimate relationship with theory. Laboratory tasks for studying production are difficult to devise, so that much research addressed production failure, such as slips of the tongue. An unhappy result of this focus has been models of production that are largely determined by the characteristics of failed rather than succcssful operation of the processes modeled; moreover, the models have rarely prompted new research. Only in recent years have mod els and laboratory studies of successful production bccomc widely available. Despite these differences, theoretical questions in recognition and produc- Speech, Language, and Communication

Consonant Change in English Worldwide

“…Among others, this model has the advantage that it may account for why hearers are able to recognise and correctly identify polysyllabic lexical items while a speaker is still in the process of saying them (Cutler 1995). Crucially, word recognition starts immediately and automatically when a word is produced; as such it depends on the amount of information given and it depends on the linear processing of an incoming acoustic signal.…”

Competition between multiple words for a referent in cross-situational word learning

“…Lexical competition is central to many phenomena in language including lexical access and on-line sentence comprehension (e.g., Allopenna, Magnuson, & Tanenhaus, 1998; Cutler, 1995; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999; McClelland & Elman, 1986; Marslen-Wilson, 1990; Norris, 1994). Lexical competition has also been proposed to play an important role in word learning in children and adults (MacWhinney, 1989; McMurray, Horst, & Samuelson, 2012; Merriman, 1999), and is a central mechanism assumed by models of cross-situational word-referent learning (Frank, Goodman, & Tenenbaum, 2009; Kachergis, Yu, & Shiffrin, 2012; Regier, 2005; Siskind, 1996; Smith, Smith, & Blythe, 2011; Yu & Ballard, 2007).…”

A comparison of lexeme and speech syllables in Dutch

“…In speech perception, recent research has shown that sublexical units such as the syllable can be crucial in speech segmentation and recognition (Dupoux, 1993;Cutler, 1995 for a review; Mehler et al, 1981b;Nusbaum & DeGroot 1990;Pitt & Samuel, 1995). Using a syllable monitoring task Mehler, Dommergues, Frauenfelder, & Segui (1981b, p. 302) could show that French subjects were faster in detecting a sequence of phonemes when it corresponded to the first syllable of a stimulus word than when it did not.…”