Use what you can: storage, abstraction processes, and perceptual adjustments help listeners recognize reduced forms

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Phonetics
• Auditory Perception

Background:

• Native listeners often encounter reduced speech forms.
• Understanding how listeners process and adapt to speech reductions is crucial for language acquisition and processing models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how exposure to different types of Dutch word reductions affects listener recognition.
• To determine if familiarization with one reduction type aids in processing another.
• To explore the role of reduction consistency in learning and generalization.

Main Methods:

• Three eye-tracking experiments involving Dutch native listeners.
• Exposure phase: participants heard either /b/-reductions, vowel deletions, or no reductions.
• Test phase: recognition of reduced words (repeated or new) in neutral sentences.

Main Results:

• Word-specific learning occurred for vowel deletions but not /b/-reductions.
• Generalization to new words of the same type occurred with consistent /b/-reductions.
• Generalization to different reduction types occurred with inconsistent vowel deletions.

Conclusions:

• Listeners employ distinct strategies for processing consistent versus inconsistent speech reductions.
• Storing reduced variants aids processing of inconsistent reductions.
• Abstracting mapping rules aids processing of consistent reductions.
• Experience with inconsistent pronunciations improves perceptual flexibility for novel reductions.