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Perceptual representations of phonotactically illegal syllables
Mara Breen1, John Kingston, Lisa D Sanders
1Department of Psychology and Education, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, 01075, USA. mbreen@mtholyoke.edu
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics
|November 20, 2012
Summary
Phonotactic constraints influence speech perception by altering early processing of sound sequences. Even illegal sound combinations are processed, affecting how subsequent sounds are perceived.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Auditory Perception
Background:
- Listeners often perceive phonotactically illegal sound sequences as similar to legal ones.
- Previous research suggested phonotactics constrain early speech perception, but evidence was inconclusive.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the role of phonotactic legality in speech perception using event-related potentials (ERPs).
- To examine how phonotactically illegal primes affect the processing of legal speech targets.
Main Methods:
- A priming paradigm was used with legal targets preceded by identity, control, or illegal primes.
- Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to measure brain responses.
- Participant similarity ratings were collected for different prime-target conditions.
Main Results:
- Targets elicited greater positivity 200-350 ms after onset when preceded by illegal or control primes compared to identity primes.
- Later ERP components (350-600 ms) and similarity ratings did not differ between identity and illegal prime conditions.
- These findings suggest that phonotactic legality influences early perceptual processing of speech.
Conclusions:
- Speech perception involves generating and maintaining veridical representations of phoneme sequences.
- These maintained representations impact the perceptual processing of subsequent speech sounds.
- Phonotactic rules play a role in shaping auditory perception of spoken language.
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