Abstract
To investigate the processing of acoustic and semantic information on phonemic categorical perception, two nine-step continua consisting of natural and synthetic consonant-vowel (CV) syllables were presented in four different contexts. For both natural and synthetic speech, /ti/-/pi/ continua varying in spectral tilt were constructed. The four contexts included the isolated CV syllable, a neutral context sentence with the CV at the end, and two additional sentences with varying semantic load. One semantically favored a /p/ response and one a /t/ response. Eleven adults with normal hearing (2 males, 9 females, 21 45 years old, mean age=27) labeled the consonant in the CV syllable. Results showed a pattern of statistically-significant differences between the isolated and neutral context versus the semantically-loaded sentences for both natural and synthetic stimuli, suggesting an effect of semantic context. The differences appeared in the vicinity of the boundaries of the psychometric functions, suggesting an interaction between top-down and bottom-up processing. Strictly bottom-up processing would have shown overlaid response functions, and strictly top-down processing would have shown differences at the endpoints. The pattern of results suggests interactive, parallel rather than hierarchical processing.
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