Auditory‐visual context effects on the perception of /r/ and /l/ in a stop cluster.

Abstract

Context effects in speech perception are thought to reflect knowledge about coarticulatory influences from the surrounding phonetic environment. This study investigated if such effects occur when the context is specified in the visual modality and segmental information in the auditory modality. In the first experiment, two continua were synthesized: one varying from /iri–ili/ and the other from /ibri–ibli/. When presented to listeners for identification as /r/ or /l/, there was a significant shift in the category boundary between the two continua. In a second experiment, the /iri–ili/ tokens were paired with visual tokens of a talker saying /ibi/. When presented in an auditory‐visual (AV) condition, these tokens were perceived as ranging from /ibri/ to /ibli/. Observers also identified the /iri–ili/ tokens in a separate auditory‐only (AO) condition. Results indicated a similar shift in the /r–l/ boundary between the AO and AV conditions. Analysis of /r/ and /l/ productions revealed that the perceptual adjustments were consistent with the acoustic consequences of articulating /r/ and /l/ in a stop cluster. The findings suggest that the perceptual adjustment reflects cross‐modal knowledge of the coarticulatory effects of a bilabial consonant on the acoustic realization of /r/ and /l/. [Work supported by NIDCD, NIH.]