Effects of Lexical Stress in Auditory Word Recognition

Slowiaczek, Louisa M.

doi:10.1177/002383099003300104

Cited by 95 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Such a rhythmic operation would be dramatically disrupted if the acoustic correlates to stress were not correctly picked up by the listener. Mis-stressing words is indeed shown to significantly affect recognition (Bansal, 1966;Bond & Small, 1983;Cutler & Clifton, 1984;Slowiaczek, 1987Slowiaczek, , 1990, which is an indication that stress is used at an early stage of lexical processing to specify a set of potential candidates. Such a view can already be found in Brown (1977), who argued that the presentation of a word with a given stress pattern activated only the words in the lexicon that bore this pattern (see also Connine, Clifton, & Cutler, 1987).…”

Section: Stressed Syllables Initiate Sequential Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The use of time during lexical processing and segmentation: A review

Mattys

1997

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

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Speech, by its very nature, is a time-based phenomenon. Speech sounds are temporally distributed, with the presentation of one sound roughly conditioned by the fading of the previous one. In this review, three classes of models are discussed with respect to the sequential nature of speech. It is argued that the three resulting conceptions of time are linked to the type of segmentation process proposed by these models to deal with speech continuity. In the first one, lexical activation is viewed as perfectly synchronized with the temporal deployment of speech. This type of model corresponds to the traditionalleft-to-right (proactive) account of lexical processing. Because serious segmentation problems exist for such an approach (e.g., car and card are embedded in cardinal), the second type of model treats word recognition as the result of a mechanism that sometimes delays commitment on word identity beyond word offset. Lexical activation, instead of shadowing the unfolding of time, lags behind it until an unambiguous decision can be made. The temporarily unprocessed information is stored in a memory buffer. In the third approach, a prosodic cue (lexical stress) contributes actively to speech segmentation and lexical processing. Every stressed syllable encountered in the signal is postulated as a word onset and thus constitutes the starting point of lexical activation. However, with non-initial-stressed words, retroactive procedures going "back in time" must be used. Finally,the use oftime (including proactive, delayed, and retroactive procedures) is discussed in light of cross-linguistic phonological differences.How spoken words are recognized is a major concern in psycho linguistics. Models posited to explain this complex cognitive skill have traditionally ascribed a central position to the notion of lexical processing, which corresponds to the multiple steps that lead to the recognition of a word (Frauenfelder & Tyler, 1987). Lexical processing includes three stages: (l) the initial contact between the input signal and the mental lexicon, (2) the activation ofcandidates in the lexicon and their progressive selection, and (3) the recognition of the actual word. The term lexical access is usually reserved to describe the moment at which lexical information becomes available to the speech processor.Approaching lexical processing and segmentation from a time perspective is unconventional in the field of word recognition. Traditionally, research has mainly focused on the informational side ofspeech processing (amount of information, number of phonemes, type of perceptual units, quality of the input, etc.). However, it is possible to examine and classify the models built on this type of evidence along a time-based typology. In this review, I have This work was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant ROI MH516630 I. I am very grateful to Arty Samuel for his supervision of this work and to the following members of the speech laboratory: Donna Kat and Lee Wurm. Thanks are also due Susan Brennan, Richard G...

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Section: Stressed Syllables Initiate Sequential Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The use of time during lexical processing and segmentation: A review

Mattys

1997

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

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“…Apart from the practical reason of avoiding ceiling effects in intelligibility, we chose to use exceptionally fast speech because we expected that a degraded speech signal would cause listeners to rely more on prosodic cues than when speech quality is high. Prosody has been shown to be an important source of information in lexical processing (Cutler and Clifton, 1984;Cutler and van Donselaar, 2001;Cutler and Koster, 2000;van Heuven, 1985;Slowiaczek, 1990), and listeners rely even more on prosodic information in case of adverse listening conditions (van Donselaar and Lentz, 1994;Wingfield, 1975;Wingfield et al, 1984). However, for this heavily time-compressed speech, making the timing pattern more similar to that of natural fast speech turned out to have a negative effect on intelligibility, relative to linear time compression (Janse et al, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Word perception in fast speech: artificially time-compressed vs. naturally produced fast speech

Janse

2004

Speech Communication

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Natural fast speech differs from normal-rate speech with respect to its temporal pattern. Previous results showed that word intelligibility of heavily artificially time-compressed speech could not be improved by making its temporal pattern more similar to that of natural fast speech. This might have been due to the extrapolation of timing rules for natural fast speech to rates that are much faster than can be attained by human speakers. The present study investigates whether, at a speech rate that human speakers can attain, artificially time-compressed speech is easier to process if its timing pattern is similar to that of naturally produced fast speech. Our first experiment suggests, however, that word processing speed was slowed down, relative to linear compression. In a second experiment, word processing of artificially time-compressed speech was compared with processing of naturally produced fast speech. Even when naturally produced fast speech is perfectly intelligible, its less careful articulation, combined with the changed timing pattern, slows down processing, relative to linearly time-compressed speech. Furthermore, listeners preferred artificially time-compressed speech over naturally produced fast speech. These results suggest that linearly time-compressed speech has both a temporal and a segmental advantage over natural fast speech.

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“…Cutler and Clifton (1984);van Heuven (1985) and Slowiaczek (1990) showed that word recognition is delayed when words in stress languages such as English and Dutch are deliberately mis-stressed. Cutler and Koster (2000) showed that stress information plays an important role in lexical activation in Dutch, and Cutler and van Donselaar (2001) also showed that listeners effectively use suprasegmental cues in Dutch.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Word-level intelligibility of time-compressed speech: prosodic and segmental factors

Janse

Nooteboom

Quené

2003

Speech Communication

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In this study we investigate whether speakers, in line with the predictions of the Hyper-and Hypospeech theory, speed up most during the least informative parts and less during the more informative parts, when they are asked to speak faster. We expected listeners to benefit from these changes in timing, and our main goal was to find out whether making the temporal organisation of artificially time-compressed speech more like that of natural fast speech would improve intelligibility over linear time compression. Our production study showed that speakers reduce unstressed syllables more than stressed syllables, thereby making the prosodic pattern more pronounced. We extrapolated fast speech timing to even faster rates because we expected that the more salient prosodic pattern could be exploited in difficult listening situations. However, at very fast speech rates, applying fast speech timing worsens intelligibility. We argue that the non-uniform way of speeding up may not be due to an underlying communicative principle, but may result from speakersÕ inability to speed up otherwise. As both prosodic and segmental information contribute to word recognition, we conclude that extrapolating fast speech timing to extremely fast rates distorts this balance between prosodic and segmental information.

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Effects of Lexical Stress in Auditory Word Recognition

Cited by 95 publications

References 24 publications

The use of time during lexical processing and segmentation: A review

The use of time during lexical processing and segmentation: A review

Word perception in fast speech: artificially time-compressed vs. naturally produced fast speech

Word-level intelligibility of time-compressed speech: prosodic and segmental factors

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