Effects of changes in stress, voicing and place of articulation on word recognition in continuous speech

Abstract

The perceptual effects of three types of mispronunciations were investigated in a continuous speech shadowing task. Two‐syllable key words were mispronounced, changing either the stress pattern, the voicing of obstruents, or the front‐back dimension of vowels. Three separate prose passages, taken from a popular novel, were used in the three experimental conditions. Each passage was approximately 650 words in length and contained 20 key words. The key words in the three conditions were equated for predictability from context and for frequency of occurrence in English. Subjects were instructed to shadow all three passages. The majority of subjects' responses were exact repetitions when either stress or place was altered. When voicing was altered, the majority of subjects' responses were corrections (restorations) of the mispronounced words.