Putting phonetic context effects into context: A commentary on Fowler (2006)

Lotto, Andrew J.; Holt, Lori L.

doi:10.3758/bf03193667

Cited by 53 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…These accounts generally concentrate on variation that is created by continuous speech processes-that is, coarticulation. Again, different mechanisms have been proposed, ranging from the recovery of speech gestures from the signal (Fowler, 1996;Liberman, 1996), to general auditory mechanisms (Lotto & Holt, 2006;, to more abstract pattern recognition mechanisms (Smits, 2001). An example of the latter is the phonological-inference account of Gaskell and Marslen-Wilson (1998), in which phonological rules rectify the variant forms into the canonical form.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sink positive: Linguistic experience with th substitutions influences nonnative word recognition

Hanulíková

Weber

2011

Atten Percept Psychophys

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We used eyetracking, perceptual discrimination, and production tasks to examine the influences of perceptual similarity and linguistic experience on word recognition in nonnative (L2) speech. Eye movements to printed words were tracked while German and Dutch learners of English heard words containing one of three pronunciation variants (/t/, /s/, or /f/) of the interdental fricative /θ/. Irrespective of whether the speaker was Dutch or German, looking preferences for target words with /θ/ matched the preferences for producing /s/ variants in German speakers and /t/ variants in Dutch speakers (as determined via the production task), while a control group of English participants showed no such preferences. The perceptually most similar and most confusable /f/ variant (as determined via the discrimination task) was never preferred as a match for /θ/. These results suggest that linguistic experience with L2 pronunciations facilitates recognition of variants in an L2, with effects of frequency outweighing effects of perceptual similarity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sink positive: Linguistic experience with th substitutions influences nonnative word recognition

Hanulíková

Weber

2011

Atten Percept Psychophys

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“…When nonspeech sine wave tone contexts with spectra modeling the third-formant ͑F3͒ offset frequency of /al/ and /ar/ precede /ga/ to /da/ targets, context-dependent speech categorization shifts are observed that mirror the effects produced by /al/ and /ar/ speech contexts. Other studies have verified the generality of this finding ͑for a brief review, see Lotto and Holt, 2006͒. Nonspeech context effects on speech categorization have been observed with nonspeech analogs of consonant contexts affecting categorization of consonants ͑Fowler et al, 2000;Lotto et al, 2003;vowels ͑Holt et al, 2000͒.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 74%

The mean matters: Effects of statistically defined nonspeech spectral distributions on speech categorization

Holt

2006

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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103

136

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Adjacent speech, and even nonspeech, contexts influence phonetic categorization. Four experiments investigated how preceding sequences of sine-wave tones influence phonetic categorization. This experimental paradigm provides a means of investigating the statistical regularities of acoustic events that influence online speech categorization and, reciprocally, reveals regularities of the sound environment tracked by auditory processing. The tones comprising the sequences were drawn from distributions sampling different acoustic frequencies. Results indicate that whereas the mean of the distributions predicts contrastive shifts in speech categorization, variability of the distributions has little effect. Moreover, speech categorization is influenced by the global mean of the tone sequence, without significant influence of local statistical regularities within the tone sequence. Further arguing that the effect is strongly related to the average spectrum of the sequence, notched noise spectral complements of the tone sequences produce a complementary effect on speech categorization. Lastly, these effects are modulated by the number of tones in the acoustic history and the overall duration of the sequence, but not by the density with which the distribution defining the sequence is sampled. Results are discussed in light of stimulus-specific adaptation to statistical regularity in the acoustic input and a speculative link to talker normalization is postulated.

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“…Such accounts assume that only canonical forms are stored in the lexicon and that listeners learn how to map variant forms onto stored canonical forms through exposure (e.g., Gaskell & Marslen-Wilson, 1998;Lotto & Holt, 2006;. These models thus also make assumptions about representations, but the burden of their explanation for recognition of variant forms is carried by their assumptions about processing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Third, in two subsequent experiments, we examined how short-term training on an accent influences word recognition, again as a function of strength of accent (Experiment 2), but also as a function of speaker (Experiment 3). The results of these experiments will be related to models of spoken-word recognition and the accounts they offer for how listeners cope with pronunciation variation-those based on representation (e.g., Goldinger, 1998;Johnson, 2006;Pierrehumbert, 2001;Ranbom & Connine, 2007) and those based on processing (e.g., Gaskell & Marslen-Wilson, 1998;Lotto & Holt, 2006;Mitterer, Csépe, Honbolygo, & Blomert, 2006).…”

Section: Familiarity With German-accented Dutchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foreign accent strength and listener familiarity with an accent codetermine speed of perceptual adaptation

Witteman

Weber

McQueen

2013

Atten Percept Psychophys

117

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We investigated how the strength of a foreign accent and varying types of experience with foreignaccented speech influence the recognition of accented words. In Experiment 1, native Dutch listeners with limited or extensive prior experience with German-accented Dutch completed a cross-modal priming experiment with strongly, medium, and weakly accented words. Participants with limited experience were primed by the medium and weakly accented words, but not by the strongly accented words. Participants with extensive experience were primed by all accent types. In Experiments 2 and 3, Dutch listeners with limited experience listened to a short story before doing the cross-modal priming task. In Experiment 2, the story was spoken by the priming task speaker and either contained strongly accented words or did not. Strongly accented exposure led to immediate priming by novel strongly accented words, while exposure to the speaker without strongly accented tokens led to priming only in the experiment's second half. In Experiment 3, listeners listened to the story with strongly accented words spoken by a different Germanaccented speaker. Listeners were primed by the strongly accented words, but again only in the experiment's second half. Together, these results show that adaptation to foreignaccented speech is rapid but depends on accent strength and on listener familiarity with those strongly accented words.

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Putting phonetic context effects into context: A commentary on Fowler (2006)

Cited by 53 publications

References 48 publications

Sink positive: Linguistic experience with th substitutions influences nonnative word recognition

Sink positive: Linguistic experience with th substitutions influences nonnative word recognition

The mean matters: Effects of statistically defined nonspeech spectral distributions on speech categorization

Foreign accent strength and listener familiarity with an accent codetermine speed of perceptual adaptation

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