Thinking fast and slow about words and voices: RT-distributional analyses of voice-specific priming in auditory word...

Studies have demonstrated that listeners can retain detailed voice-specific acoustic information about spoken words in memory. A central question is when such information influences lexical processing. According to episodic models of the mental lexicon, voice-specific details influence word recognition immediately during online speech perception. Another view, the Time-Course Hypothesis, claims that voice-specific details influence word recognition only when processing is slow and effortful. The present study investigates the latter proposal by employing reaction time (RT)-distributional analyses. A long-term repetition priming experiment was conducted using an auditory lexical-decision task. In 2 blocks, participants made speeded responses to existing and nonexisting spoken words. In the second block, stimuli consisted of items that had not been presented in the first block and of items that were either repeated in the same voice or in a different voice. Ex-Gaussian and Vincentile analyses of the RT distributions in the second block revealed that voice-specific priming is reflected in distributional shifting rather than in distributional skewing. This indicates that voice-specific priming is not limited to very slow responses but that it affects both fast and slow responses. This finding is inconsistent with a strict version of the Time-Course Hypothesis, which claims that voice-specific priming occurs only during offline processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).