Gaining insight into the representational unit for spoken words with a naming task

Abstract

Theoretical proposals for the representational unit used in recognizing spoken words include the phoneme, allophone, and position-specific phoneme. The present experiment was devised to differentiate among these proposals. Subjects heard natural CVC stimuli in prime-target pairs and named the second item (target) as quickly as possible. The phonetic overlap between prime and target was varied to create five different intrapair relations such that the expected pattern of priming effects across the set of relations was different for each of the three phonetic representations. The obtained pattern is inconsistent with an abstract phonemic unit and points to either a position-specific phonemic or allophonic unit. This pattern was found for both word and nonword stimuli. Thus these priming results appear to tap the recognition process prior to lexical activation. Priming effects were eliminated when stimuli within a prime-target pair were produced by different voices. The implications of the findings for refining models of spoken word recognition will be discussed. [Work supported by NINCDS.]