When Words Compete: Levels of Processing in Perception of Spoken Words

Abstract

Current theories of spoken-word recognition posit two levels of representation and process: lexical and sublexical. By manipulating probabilistic phonotactics and similarity-neighborhood density, we attempted to determine if these two levels of representation have dissociable effects on processing. Whereas probabilistic phonotactics have been associated with facilitatory effects on recognition, increases in similarity-neighborhood density typically result in inhibitory effects on recognition arising from lexical competition. Our results demonstrated that when the lexical level is invoked using real words, competitive effects of neighborhood density are observed. However, when strong lexical effects are removed by the use of nonsense word stimuli, facilitatory effects of phonotactics emerge. These results are consistent with a two-level framework of process and representation embodied in certain current models of spoken-word recognition.

Lexical viability constraints on speech segmentation by infants

“…Considerable empirical evidence supports the view that, in languages such as English and Dutch (which has the same predominant word-stress pattern), listeners indeed follow the MSS in word segmentation (Cutler & Butterfield, 1992;Cutler & Norris, 1988;McQueen, Norris, & Cutler, 1994;Vroomen & de Gelder, 1995). Similarly, knowledge of native language phonotactic patterns has been suggested as another source of information about potential word boundaries in fluent speech (Brent & Cartwright, 1996;Cairns, Shillcock, Chater, & Levy, 1997;van der Lugt, 2001;McQueen, 1998;Vitevitch & Luce, 1998, 1999. For example, certain phonotactic patterns occur much more frequently between words than within the words of a language.…”

Neural substrates of phonological and lexicosemantic representations in Alzheimer's disease

“…Immediate repetition paradigms have in fact been extensively used in psycholinguistic research to explore the structure of phonological and lexical representations. These studies have typically shown faster and more accurate performance for the repetition of words than for nonwords [the ''lexicality effect''; Hulme et al, 1991;Vitevitch and Luce, 1998;Vitevitch et al, 1999]. This advantage has been attributed to the recruitment of lexicosemantic knowledge during word but not nonword repetition.…”

“…Most interestingly, even repetition performance for nonword lists is influenced by the activation of sublexical language knowledge; this knowledge concerns the statistical properties of possible phoneme co-occurrences in a given language. Indeed, repetition of lists of nonwords containing phoneme co-occurrences that are frequent in native language phonology (highly wordlike stimuli) is faster and more accurate than repetition of nonwords composed of infrequent phoneme combinations (less wordlike stimuli) [see Gathercole et al, 1999;Majerus et al, 2004;Vitevitch and Luce, 1998 for a description of this ''phonotactic frequency effect'']. At a behavioral level, these lexicality and phonotactic frequency effects have been reported to be relatively preserved in AD [Peters et al, 2007].…”

Possible words and fixed stress in the segmentation of Slovak speech

“…Through competition, the word-recognition system can settle on an optimal parse of the speech input, even if signal-based cues are not present. The activation and competition of multiple lexical candidates are core mechanisms implemented by most models of spoken-word recognition (e.g., TRACE, McClelland & Elman, 1986;and Shortlist, Norris, 1994;see McQueen, 2005, for a review) and have received a great deal of empirical support (e.g., Allopenna, Magnuson, & Tanenhaus, 1998;Cluff & Luce, 1990;Connine, Blasko, & Titone, 1993;McQueen, Norris, & Cutler, 1994;Norris, McQueen, & Cutler, 1995;Tabossi, Burani, & Scott, 1995;Vitevitch & Luce, 1998Vroomen & de Gelder, 1995;Zwitserlood & Schriefers, 1995). In the English phrase play tennis, the words play, lay, late, and any, for example, would compete with each other.…”