What you hear first, is what you get: Initial metrical cue presentation modulates syllable detection in sentence processing.

Abstract

Auditory rhythms create powerful expectations for the listener. Rhythmic cues with the same temporal structure as subsequent sentences enhance processing compared with irregular or mismatched cues. In the present study, we focus on syllable detection following matched rhythmic cues. Cues were aligned with subsequent sentences at the syllable (low-level cue) or the accented syllable (high-level cue) level. A different group of participants performed the task without cues to provide a baseline. We hypothesized that unaccented syllable detection would be faster after low-level cues, and accented syllable detection would be faster after high-level cues. There was no difference in syllable detection depending on whether the sentence was preceded by a high-level or low-level cue. However, the results revealed a priming effect of the cue that participants heard first. Participants who heard a high-level cue first were faster to detect accented than unaccented syllables, and faster to detect accented syllables than participants who heard a low-level cue first. The low-level-first participants showed no difference between detection of accented and unaccented syllables. The baseline experiment confirmed that hearing a low-level cue first removed the benefit of the high-level grouping structure for accented syllables. These results suggest that the initially perceived rhythmic structure influenced subsequent cue perception and its influence on syllable detection. Results are discussed in terms of dynamic attending, temporal context effects, and implications for context effects in neural entrainment.