The lexical status effect on place of articulation and voice onset time contrasts

Abstract

Ganong [J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform. 6, 110–125 (1980)] first reported that the presence of a word at one end of a voice onset time series influenced the classification of stimuli near the boundary. Fox [Percept. Psychophys. 34, 526–540 (1983)] reported a similar effect using place of articulation stimuli. In the present experiment, the lexical status effect on two voice onset time continuua (/bot/ to /pot/ and /bok/ to /pok/) was compared to that on two place of articulation continuua (/bon/ to /don/ and /bop/ to /dop/). Results showed effects of lexical status for both types of stimuli. Ambiguous tokens near the category boundary were perceived in favor of the word, while the classification of endpoint stimuli was not influenced. The lexical status effect was significantly larger for voice onset time stimuli than for place of articulation stimuli. This difference may result from the time required for the lexical status effect to develop, suggesting alternate interpretation of Fox's data on the time course of the effect. Implications for interactive and separate stage models are discussed.