Effects of voice-onset time and talker variability on lexical access

Abstract

The effects of voice-onset time and talker variability on accessing word meaning were investigated. Two short-term semantic priming experiments were used to evaluate if the magnitude of semantic priming would be reduced by these two types of variability. In Experiment 1, a lexical decision task and a phoneme identification task were used to examine whether listeners’ sensitivity to voice-onset time affects their processing of a semantically related word. In Experiment 2, a lexical decision task and a talker discrimination task were used to examine whether listeners’ sensitivity to talker changes affects lexical access. The results showed that while listeners were sensitive to voice-onset time and talker variability, neither affected the magnitude of semantic priming. Nonetheless, Experiment 2 also showed that talker discrimination was easier when real word targets were presented, indicating that the word/nonword lexical status affected the processing of talker information. These findings, overall, suggest that there is no reliable evidence that voice-onset time and talker variability affect accessing word meaning.