A perceptual locus for anchoring effects in vowels

Abstract

The perceptual locus of anchoring effects in vowel identification was investigated using a series of synthetic, steady‐state vowels ranging from [i] to [I]. In the control conditions, each stimulus occurred equally often. In the anchoring conditions, one of the end points occurred more often than the other stimuli. The category boundary in the anchoring condition shifted toward the more frequently occurring stimulus, relative to the control. A signal detection analysis was used to separate the effects of sensitivity from those of response bias. For the [i] anchor, each subject showed a decrease in sensitivity for the stimulus pair at the category boundary following anchoring. For the [I] anchor group, an increase in sensitivity at the category boundary was found. Changes in criterion placement were inconsistent across subjects. These data indicate that anchoring effects occur at a relatively early stage of vowel processing. Implications of the data for the nature of vowel processing will be discussed. [Re...