Stimulus-directed attention attenuates lexically-guided perceptual learning

Abstract

Studies on perceptual learning are motivated by phonetic variation that listeners encounter across speakers, items, and context. In this study, the authors investigate what control the listener has over the perceptual learning of ambiguous /s/ pronunciations through inducing changes in their attentional set. Listeners' attention is manipulated during a lexical decision exposure task such that their attention is directed at the word-level for comprehension-oriented listening or toward the signal for perception-oriented listening. In a categorization task with novel words, listeners in the condition that maximally biased listeners toward comprehension-oriented attentional sets showed the most perceptual learning. Focus on higher levels of linguistic meaning facilitated generalization to new words. These results suggest that the way in which listeners attend to the speech stream affects how linguistic categories are updated, providing insight into the qualitative differences in perceptual learning between the psychophysics and language-focused literatures.

The Role of Lexical Status and Individual Differences for Perceptual Learning in Younger and Older Adults

“…However, in an analysis of only older adult data, we did find an effect of attention-switching control, which suggests that older adults with poorer attentionswitching control show more learning-consistent behaviour than those with better attentionswitching control. The direction of this attention-switching effect remains consistent with previous work (McAuliffe & Babel, 2016;Scharenborg et al, 2015), suggesting that attending to the signal in a lexically-guided learning task is detrimental to learning compared to maintaining attention at the task-level. We also found differing results from Scharenborg and Janse (2013) in terms of the effect of accepting ambiguous target words on learning-consistent behaviour.…”

“…Table 3 shows the breakdown of percentage 'yes' response by age group and exposure type (/ɛ/ was ambiguous vs. /ɪ/) for the control and ambiguous targets. Given that we chose a more conservative estimate for our ambiguous tokens (70% rather than 50%), these results provide evidence that participants were still accepting of the ambiguous targets as real words to a level that is similar to previous work (e.g., McAuliffe & Babel, 2016;Scharenborg et al, 2015).…”

“…Directing attention to the idiosyncratic nature of the stimuli during a lexically-guided learning task has been found to be detrimental to perceptual learning, compared to when attention remains focused on the task (McAuliffe & Babel, 2016). Scharenborg et al (2015) found that older adults with poorer attention-switching control show more learning-consistent behaviour than those with better attention-switching control.…”

The Goldilocks Zone of Perceptual Learning

“…The sample size used in this study (25 participants per condition) was based on previous work (McAuliffe & Babel, 2016;Reinisch et al, 2013) for reliably finding moderate effect sizes.…”

“…Note that in addition to lexical status assisting in the interpretation of a sound, the phonological position of the critical sound within the word also appears to be crucial. When ambiguous sounds replace critical fricatives in initial position, listeners do not show perceptual learning (Jesse & McQueen, 2011;McAuliffe & Babel, 2016). Similarly, when ambiguous sounds hamper a listener's ability to identify the item as a word (Clarke-Davidson, Luce, & Sawusch, 2008;Scharenborg & Janse, 2013;Witteman, Weber, & McQueen, 2013), the listener is less likely to perceptually learn.…”