Contextual speech rate influences morphosyntactic prediction and integration

Abstract

Understanding spoken language requires the integration and weighting of multiple cues, and may call on cue integration mechanisms that have been studied in other areas of perception. In the current study, we used eye-tracking (visual-world paradigm) to examine how contextual speech rate (a lower-level, perceptual cue) and morphosyntactic knowledge (a higher-level, linguistic cue) are iteratively combined and integrated. Results indicate that participants used contextual rate information immediately, which we interpret as evidence of perceptual inference and the generation of predictions about upcoming morphosyntactic information. Additionally, we observed that early rate effects remained active in the presence of later conflicting lexical information. This result demonstrates that (1) contextual speech rate functions as a cue to morphosyntactic inferences, even in the presence of subsequent disambiguating information; and (2) listeners iteratively use multiple sources of information to draw inferences and generate predictions during speech comprehension. We discuss the implication of these demonstrations for theories of language processing. ARTICLE HISTORY

A Compositional Neural Architecture for Language

“…The chief prediction regarding structure and meaning from the architecture is that low-frequency power and phase synchronization should increase as structure and meaning build up in time. This has been attested in the literature (Brennan & Martin, 2019;Kaufeld, Naumann, et al, 2019;Kaufeld, Ravenschlag, et al, 2019;Meyer, 2018;Ding et al, 2016;Meyer, Henry, Gaston, Schmuck, & Friederici, 2016;Bastiaansen et al, 2005Bastiaansen et al, , 2008 but needs more careful investigation. It is likely that low-frequency phase organization reflects the increasingly distributed nature of the neural assemblies being (de)synchronized as structure and meaning are inferred, rather than reflecting a phrasal or sentential oscillator.…”

“…Perceptual inference asserts that sensory cues activate latent representations in the neural system that have been learned through experience. 4 In line with this idea, there is everaccumulating evidence that "lower level" cues like speech rate and phoneme perception (e.g., Kaufeld, Ravenschlag, Meyer, Martin, & Bosker, 2019;Kaufeld, Naumann, Meyer, Bosker, & Martin, 2019;Heffner, Dilley, McAuley, & Pitt, 2013;Dilley & Pitt, 2010), morphology (e.g., Gwilliams, Linzen, Poeppel, & Marantz, 2018;Martin, Monahan, & Samuel, 2017), foveal and parafoveally processed orthography (e.g., Cutter, Martin, & Sturt, 2019;Veldre & Andrews, 2018;Schotter, Angele, & Rayner, 2012), as well as "higher level" sentential (e.g., Kutas, Ferreira, & Martin, 2018;Martin & McElree, 2008van Alphen & Table 1.…”

Discourse Markers Activate Their, Like, Cohort Competitors

“…One interesting constraint for future investigation is prosody. Recent research has argued that prosodic cues-for instance, intonation or speech rate-can guide listeners' expectations (Kaufeld, Naumann et al, 2020;Kaufeld, Ravenschlag et al, 2020;Kurumada et al, 2014). Our speaker produced DM like with naturalistic prosody, yet perhaps more pronounced prosodic cues to like being used as a discourse marker (e.g., decrease in fundamental frequency; slower speech rate; Drager, 2011;Schleef & Turton, 2018) could modulate the extent to which cohort competitors are activated in online word recognition.…”

Linguistic syncopation: Meter-syntax alignment affects sentence comprehension and sensorimotor synchronization

“…And the stress patterns that punctuate speech rhythm affect perceptual grouping (Lee & Todd, 2004;Martin, 1972). For example, one can be pushed between hearing "crisis turnip" or "cry sister nip" depending on the prior rhythmic context and the metrical expectancies they induce (Brown et al, 2011(Brown et al, , 2015Dilley & McAuley, 2008;Kaufeld et al, 2019). Rhythm can even make syllables perceptually disappear altogether (Baese-Berk et al, 2019;Dilley & Pitt, 2010;Morrill et al, 2014).…”