Perceptual compensation with familiar and unfamiliar rounding coarticulation

Abstract

We compared the integration of three kinds of contextual information in the perception of the fricatives [s] and [∫]. We asked American English listeners to identify sounds on an [s] to [∫] continuum and manipulated (1) the vowel context of the fricative ([Ce], [Co], [Cœ]), (2) the original fricative of the CV ([s] vs [∫]), and (3) the modality of the stimulus (audio-only, AV). There was a large compensation for coarticulation effect on perception—subjects responded with “s” more often when the following vowel was round. Interestingly, and perhaps significantly, perceptual compensation was not as great with the less familiar vowel [œ] even when listeners saw the face. Measurements of lip rounding in these stimuli show that [o] and [œ] have about the same degree and type of rounding over the CV. In a second experiment, we measured reaction time to audio-visual mismatches in these stimuli (again in a fricative identification task). We found that mismatches of audio and video consonant information slowed rea...