Preventing perseveration in language production

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of the repetition of phonological elements on accuracy in spontaneous language production. Using a corpus of naturalistic speech errors, it is shown that repetition of a whole segment doubles the error rate on the second token (a perseveratory effect), for onset consonants, vowels, and coda consonants; the effect is present (at a reduced magnitude) in the speech of young children. Repetition also leads to an increased error rate on the first token (an anticipatory effect), but only for word-initial consonants and only for adults. Repetition of subsegmental features has an effect only for word-initial consonants and only perseveratorily. There are no effects of repetition of larger units (e.g., syllable onsets) or for general segmental similarity. It is argued that the effect is largely due to mechanisms designed to prevent perseveration (by e.g., shifting average activation values downward), and affects early-accessed information (whole segments; onset consonants) more than later-accessed information (subsegmental features; vowels and coda consonants).