Speech perception, word recognition and the structure of the lexicon

Abstract

This paper reports the results of three projects concerned with auditory word recognition and the structure of the lexicon. The first project was designed to experimentally test several specific predictions derived from MACS, a simulation model of the Cohort Theory of word recognition. Using a priming paradigm, evidence was obtained for acoustic-phonetic activation in word recognition in three experiments. The second project describes the results of analyses of the structure and distribution of words in the lexicon using a large lexical database. Statistics about similarity spaces for high and low frequency words were applied to previously published data on the intelligibility of words presented in noise. Differences in identification were shown to be related to structural factors about the specific words and the distribution of similar words in their neighborhoods. Finally, the third project describes efforts at developing a new theory of word recognition known as Phonetic Refinement Theory. The theory is based on findings from human listeners and was designed to incorporate some of the detailed acoustic-phonetic and phonotactic knowledge that human listeners have about the internal structure of words and the organization of words in the lexicon, and how, they use this knowledge in word recognition. Taken together, the results of these projects demonstrate a number of new and important findings about the relation between speech perception and auditory word recognition, two areas of research that have traditionally been approached from quite different perspectives in the past.

Neighborhood density effects in spoken word recognition in Spanish

“…This relationship was significant whether word length was measured in number of syllables (r = (0.47) or number of letters (r = (0.61). Pisoni et al (1985) observed a similar relationship between word length and neighborhood density in English. …”

Conhecimento fonológico em crianças com desenvolvimento típico

“…Essa postulação foi primeiramente estabelecida por Pisoni et al (1985). Os autores descrevem resultados de três projetos relacionados ao reconhecimento de palavra falada e à estrutura do léxico.…”

“…Também têm sido encontradas evidências que apontam a importância de se considerar a representação do detalhe fonético como parte do conhecimento linguístico do falante (GOLDINGER, 1996;PIERREHUMBERT, 1999;CLOPER;CONREY;PISONI, 2005), assim como a representação de unidades sublexicais mais abstratas (PISONI et al, 1985;VITEVITCH;LUCE, 1999).…”

“…Ainda, os seres humanos são dotados da capacidade de fazer inferência probabilística das representações, sendo que as frequências de tipo de estruturas linguísticas e de ocorrência das palavras têm impacto no acesso e na representação lexical, assim como também na aquisição e mudança linguística (BYBEE, 2010(BYBEE, , 2015PISONI et al, 1985;COLEMAN;PIERREHUMBERT, 1997). Também estudos têm mostrado que os seres humanos são dotados de capacidade de aprendizado estatístico e que essa capacidade se manifesta em crianças com menos de 12 meses de idade (SAFFRAN; ASLIN; NEWPORT, 1996;THIESSEN;SAFFRAN, 2003;PELUCCHI;SAFFRAN, 2009).…”

Psycholinguistics in our time

“…These models saw speech understanding as a sequence of word recognition acts; as soon as one word was identified, it would allow the beginning of the next word to be located for its processing to begin. However, the availability of the electronic dictionaries, from the mid-1980s, pulled the rug out completely from under this view (Cutler and Carter 1987;Luce 1986;Pisoni et al 1985). Vocabulary analyses showed that words in speech were hardly ever unique objects.…”