Cue shifting bias between acoustically correlated cues

Abstract

Acoustic cues signaling the same phonetic contrast are weighted differently by listeners in sound categorization. From the body of research on perceptual cue weighting, two major views have emerged. On one hand, research has shown that secondary cue weights depend on the distributional informativeness of cues. On the other hand, cues that enhance the percept of other cues have been demonstrated to get a “boost” in cue weight. The current study extends these theoretical claims to cue shifting using breathiness and pitch as cues in a novel sound categorization paradigm that induces changes in cue weights. Two factors affecting cue shifting in adult listeners were tested: distributional learning and perceptual enhancement. While a change in cue distinctiveness did cause listeners to redistribute cue weights to favour the more distinctive cue, cue shifting was not equal in all conditions. The shift was facilitated when the task allowed listeners to make use of the enhancing quality of the two cues. This findi...