Masking auditory feedback does not eliminate repetition reduction

Abstract

ABSTRACTRepetition reduces word duration. Explanations of this process have appealed to audience design, internal production mechanisms, and combinations thereof [e.g. Kahn, J. M., & Arnold, J. E. (2015). Articulatory and lexical repetition effects on durational reduction: Speaker experience vs. common ground. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30, 103–119]. Jacobs, Yiu, Watson, and Dell [2015. Why are repeated words produced with reduced durations? Evidence from inner speech and homophone production. Journal of Memory and Language, 84, 37–48] proposed the auditory feedback hypothesis, which states that speakers must hear a word, produced either by themselves or another speaker, in order for duration reduction on a subsequent production. We conducted a strong test of the auditory feedback hypothesis in two experiments, in which we used masked auditory feedback and whispering to prevent speakers from hearing themselves fully. Both experiments showed that despite limiting the sources of normal auditory feedback, repetition reduction was observed to equal extents in masked and unmasked conditions, suggesting that repetition reduction may be supported by multiple sources, such as somatosensory feedback and feedforward signals, depending on their availability.