Effects of lexical stress placement on auditory word recognition

Abstract

Research was conducted examining the role of lexical stress in auditory word recognition. In a series of experiments, isolated spoken words were presented to subjects with correctly produced stress pattern (CS) or incorrectly produced stress pattern (IS). In three separate experiments subjects were asked to identify the CS and IS items in varying amounts of white noise, make a lexical decision or monitor for any items that were nouns. The results revealed no effect of stress replacement on identification of words in noise, but revealed a significant effect of stress placement on lexical decision and noun monitoring response times. The role of lexical stress information in auditory word recognition will be discussed in light of these results. [Work supported by NIH.]