Abstract
We used a Deese-Roediger-McDermott false memory paradigm to compare Spanish words in which the phonetic realization of /s/ can vary (word-medial positions: bu[s]to ~ bu[h]to ‘chest’, word-final positions: remo[s] ~ remo[h] ‘oars’) to words in which it cannot (word-initial positions: [s]opa ~ *[h]opa ‘soup’). At study, participants listened to lists of nine words that were phonological neighbors of an unheard critical item (e.g., popa, sepa, soja, etc. for the critical item sopa). At test, participants performed free recall and yes/no recognition tasks. Replicating previous work in this paradigm, results showed robust false memory effects: that is, participants were more likely to (falsely) remember a critical item than a random intrusion. When the realization of /s/ was consistent across conditions (Experiment 1), false memory rates for varying versus non-varying words did not significantly differ. However, when the realization of /s/ varied between [s] and [h] in those positions which allow it (Experiment 2), false recognition rates for varying words like busto were significantly higher than those for non-varying words like sopa. Assuming that higher false memory rates are indicative of greater lexical activation, we interpret these results to support the predictions of exemplar theory, which claims that words with heterogeneous versus homogeneous acoustic realizations should exhibit distinct patterns of activation.
Highlights
Exemplar theory’s fundamental claim is that listeners store each instance of a word in memory, retaining details such as social context and talker identity (Pierrehumbert 2016)
Results support the hypothesis only insofar as the data exhibits a trend in the appropriate direction for the recall task
Our key finding is that rates of false recognition were significantly greater for critical items like busto compared to the baseline sopa
Summary
Exemplar theory’s fundamental claim is that listeners store each instance of a word in memory, retaining details such as social context and talker identity (Pierrehumbert 2016). Several studies have shown that listeners respond to words more quickly and accurately when they are spoken in a familiar voice, compared to an unfamiliar one (Church & Schacter 1994; Nygaard, Sommers & Pisoni 1994; Goldinger 1996; Bradlow, Nygaard & Pisoni 1999). Given its emphasis on such details, one of the challenges for exemplar theory has been to provide a mechanism by which listeners can make generalizations and recognize highly variable speech input as words. In several proposals, this is accomplished with clustering For example, any stored exemplar will become activated if it is acoustically similar to an input such as [kæt], and will activate even
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