Processing talker variability in semantic/associative priming: Does talker voice matter?

Abstract

The effect of talker variability on lexical access is investigated using short-term semantic/associative priming experiments. Prime-target pairs, either semantically associated (e.g., king-queen) or unrelated (e.g., bell-queen), were spoken by the same or different male speakers. Two interstimulus intervals (ISI, 50 and 250 ms) were used to explore the time course of semantic/associative priming and voice specificity effects. Forty listeners completed a lexical decision task followed by a talker voice discrimination task on the same auditory stimuli. Results from the lexical decision task showed semantic/associative priming effects, although the magnitude of priming was unaffected by talker variability or ISI. Results from the talker voice discrimination task showed no priming effects, although different-talker trials elicited faster and more accurate responses. In comparison with previous results using a similar paradigm (Lee & Zhang, in press; Zhang & Lee, 2011), this set of data suggests that talker va...