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Effects of phonetically-cued talker variation on semantic encoding.
Meghan Sumner1, Reiko Kataoka2
1Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Margaret Jacks Hall, Building 460, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94301-2150 sumner@stanford.edu.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|February 12, 2015
Summary
Listeners recognize spoken words equally well across accents. However, General American (GA) and British English (BE) accents aided word recognition, while New York City (NYC) accents hindered it, impacting memory.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Phonetics
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Spoken word recognition is complex, influenced by acoustic and phonetic variability.
- Listener's prior experience with different accents can affect processing.
- Current models may not fully account for talker-specific phonetic cues.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how talker accent variation influences spoken word recognition.
- To examine the impact of different accents on semantic priming and false memory.
- To challenge existing theories of spoken word recognition.
Main Methods:
- Participants completed semantic priming and false-memory tasks.
- Stimuli included spoken words produced by General American (GA), New York City (NYC), and Southern Standard British English (BE) talkers.
- Listener groups were General American English speakers.
Main Results:
- GA and BE accents facilitated semantic priming and reduced false recall.
- The NYC accent resulted in no semantic priming and increased false recall.
- Recognition equivalence was observed despite significant phonetic differences.
Conclusions:
- Phonetic variation in talker accents significantly impacts spoken word recognition.
- Encoding-based differences, sensitive to phonetic cues, play a crucial role.
- Findings necessitate revisions to current spoken word recognition models.
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