The nature and time course of the relationship between surface variability and linguistic processing.

Abstract

It is becoming increasingly prevalent to study and understand the role of surface information in the process of speech perception and to attempt to accommodate these variables in theories of speech perception. Indeed, theories of speech perception increasingly require an account of the precise circumstances under which surface details affect the ease with which listeners access spoken words. To date, the majority of studies have focused on manipulating various components of surface information (e.g., speaking rate, talker differences, dialect difference, and so on) to determine whether these manipulations matter to the processing task. The present set of studies in our laboratory represents the converse component of this relationship in order to determine whether linguistic complexity can affect or modulate listeners’ overt subjective impressions of the surface information. Two different methodologies, including semantic priming and repetition priming, were used manipulate ease of lexical access and determine the role on listeners perception of surface details (foreign accent). Additionally, the time course of the effect of linguistic context on accent rating judgments was studied as it manifested itself differently at different points during perceptual processing. Overall, these studies help understand the complex nature of the relationship between surface variability and linguistic processing.