Canadian oats and Canadian goats: Comparing distal cues to segmentation and segments

Abstract

Distal timing cues (specifically, the speech rate of sentences temporally removed from a point of ambiguity in speech) have been shown to weakly modulate segmental perception [i.e., the perception of basic speech sounds, like “p” and “b”; Newman and Sawusch (1996)] but strongly affect the perception of word boundaries [i.e., the perception of separation between words in fluent speech; Dilley and Pitt (2010)]. However, no study as of yet has directly compared the two classes of percept using identical manipulations. In this study, we will examine the role of distal timing cues to segmental perception and word segmentation using the same distal contexts (e.g., “The merchant sold Canadian oats/notes,” a word boundary distinction, or “The merchant sold Canadian coats/goats,” a voicing-based segmental distinction). Distal speech rate will be artificially slowed to an identical extent for both types of contrast. We predict that categorical perception leads distal context effects to be much stronger on word segmentation (“…Canadian oats/notes”) than on segmental perception (“…Canadian coats/goats”). This research may help bridge speech perception theories that have been developed for each class of percept, and further clarify the role of distal cues in speech perception.