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

Competing activation in bilingual language processing: Within- and between-language competition

“…In this case, the Russian word sharik was a crosslinguistic COHORT of the English target word shark (cf. Marslen-Wilson, 1987; see also Cutler, 1995), i.e., the beginning portion of the name of the target object bore phonological similarity to the name of one of the other objects in the other language. It was found that, when instructed to pick up an object whose name in language A was initially phonologically similar to the name of another object in language B, bilingual subjects frequently looked at the cross-linguistic cohort, even when the other language was not being used overtly (Spivey and Marian, 1999;Marian and Spivey, 2003).…”

The Emergence of Epenthesis: An Incremental Model of Grammar Change

“…This transition is smooth and long enough to produce the acoustic trace of a phone between the two vowels-an "intrusive" glide (as in Malay; Browman and Goldstein, 1990;Gick, 2003). The timing options in Figure 1 are attributed to the general competition between signal compression and signal recovery, or ease of articulation and ease of perception (e.g., Hunnicutt, 1985;Cutler, 1987;Lindblom, 1996;Kirchner, 1998). The distinction between representations involving overlapping rectangles and representations involving circles stands for the distinction between phonetic realizations and underlying phonological forms.…”

The role of syllabic structure in French visual word recognition

“…In summary, whereas evidence for the BOSS effect is fairly weak in the reading of English, there is certainly no evidence that the phonologically defined syllable is involved in the recognition of visually presented words. This is hardly surprising, however, given that English speakers lack sensitivity to syllable structure even in spoken word processing (e.g., Cutler, 1995;Cutler et al, 1986). On the other hand, French has relatively clear syllable boundaries, and French speakers are sensitive to this fact (e.g., Cutler, 1995;Cutler & Norris, 1988;Dupoux, 1993;Mehler, 1981), which means that the phonological syllable has a greater potential to be involved in visual word recognition for French than for English.…”

“…The answer to such a question could be different from one language to another, especially because the lexical access unit used for spoken word recognition has been shown to be different in different languages. For example, it appears that the syllable plays an important role in the perception, segmentation, and comprehension of spoken French (Cutler, 1995;Cutler & Norris, 1988;Dupoux, 1993;Mehler, 1981), but not so obviously in spoken English (e.g., Bradley, Sánchez-Casas, & García-Albea, 1993;Cutler, 1995;Cutler, Mehler, Norris, & Segui, 1986). This is presumably due to the fact that the phonological system of these two languages is different.…”

“…The idea of ambisyllabicity (Spencer, 1996), however, would lead one to prefer the third analysis because it maintains /n/ as an onset, while avoiding having a syllable that ends in a short vowel. These two ways of breaking down a word into syllabic units are based on the phonological system of spoken alphabetic languages, with the former being typically adopted in experiments that examine syllabic processing (e.g., Cutler, 1995;Ferrand, Segui, & Grainger, 1996).…”