English Listeners Use Suprasegmental Cues to Lexical Stress Early During Spoken-Word Recognition

Abstract

Purpose: We used an eye-tracking technique to investigate whether English listeners use suprasegmental information about lexical stress to speed up the recognition of spoken words in English. Method: In a visual world paradigm, 24 young English listeners followed spoken instructions to choose 1 of 4 printed referents on a computer screen (e.g., "Click on the word admiral"). Displays contained a critical pair of words (e.g., ˈadmiral-ˌadmiˈration) that were segmentally identical for their first 2 syllables but differed suprasegmentally in their 1st syllable: One word began with primary lexical stress, and the other began with secondary lexical stress. All words had phrase-level prominence. Listeners' relative proportion of eye fixations on these words indicated their ability to differentiate them over time.Results: Before critical word pairs became segmentally distinguishable in their 3rd syllables, participants fixated target words more than their stress competitors, but only if targets had initial primary lexical stress. The degree to which stress competitors were fixated was independent of their stress pattern. Conclusions: Suprasegmental information about lexical stress modulates the time course of spoken-word recognition. Specifically, suprasegmental information on the primarystressed syllable of words with phrase-level prominence helps in distinguishing the word from phonological competitors with secondary lexical stress. I n variable-stress languages, such as English, Dutch, and Spanish, the relative emphasis of syllables within a word is not governed by a rule but rather is a property of the word. This lexically defined stress can thus be used to recognize words (e.g

Low-frequency fine-structure cues allow for the online use of lexical stress during spoken-word recognition in spectrally degraded speech

“…Speech stimuli were vocoded to simulate CI listening, and LPfiltered speech was added to the opposite ear of the vocoded speech to simulate bimodal listening (vocoder þ LP condition). If listeners can efficiently process suprasegmental cues to lexical stress in spectrally degraded speech to benefit online spoken-word recognition, then we should replicate our previous results (Jesse et al, 2017), showing that listeners fixate more on targets with initial primary stress than their stress competitors while hearing the second syllable; that is, before hearing segmental information that distinguishes these words. However, we predict that due to the discarded temporal fine structure in vocoded speech, listeners will be less able, or even unable, to use suprasegmental cues to lexical stress during spoken-word recognition.…”

“…Stimuli materials were taken from our previous study showing the online use of lexical stress in spoken-word recognition by normal-hearing English listeners (Jesse et al, 2017). These materials consisted of 24 test sets, in addition to eight sets created for filler trials and six sets for practice trials.…”

“…In addition, critical words were matched in frequency across stress type (t(23) ¼ 0.01, p > 0.05). The critical words were three-or four-syllable words (with the exception of one five-syllabic word) and the non-critical words were three-to five-syllable words (all critical words are available in the Appendix of Jesse et al, 2017).…”

“…Recent work on English and Dutch provided evidence that suprasegmental information about lexical stress can indeed speed up the recognition of target words before later segmental cues resolve lexical competition (Jesse et al, 2017;Reinisch et al, 2010). Using eye tracking with a visual world paradigm, the time course of spoken-word recognition and that of lexical competition were tracked in these studies, as listeners' spontaneous fixations to a referent shown on a computer screen are indicative of the momentary degree of support for that referent's label as a lexical candidate (Allopenna et al, 1998).…”

“…Using the paradigm of Jesse et al (2017), listeners' eye fixations on four printed words were tracked while hearing one of the words in a neutral carrier sentence. Two of these words were segmentally identical in their initial two syllables but had either primary stress or secondary stress on the first syllable ("admi'ration ["aedm@'reISn] vs 'admiral ['aedm@r@l]).…”