English listeners use suprasegmental lexical stress online during spoken word recognition

Abstract

Lexical stress facilitates spoken word recognition. In English, listeners primarily rely on vowel reduction in unstressed syllables as a cue to lexical stress, but are nevertheless sensitive to suprasegmental cues (Cooper et al., 2002 Lang. Speech). In the present study, we tested with a visual-world eye-tracking paradigm whether English listeners utilize suprasegmental stress cues online during word recognition. On each trial, listeners heard one of four displayed printed words. Two of the words (critical words) were segmentally identical in their first two syllables but differed in the suprasegmental realization of stress in their first syllable. The first syllable had either primary (e.g., admiral) or secondary (admiration) lexical stress. The other two words were phonologically and semantically unrelated to the critical items. In the critical word trials, listeners looked more frequently at the targets with initial primary stress than at the competitors with secondary stress during the presentation of the first two syllables. No difference was found when the targets had secondary stress. The degree to which competitors were fixated was not modulated by stress. This suggests that English listeners use the presence, but not the absence, of suprasegmental cues to primary lexical stress during word recognition.