Phonetic category activation predicts the direction and magnitude of perceptual adaptation to accented speech

Unfamiliar accents can systematically shift speech acoustics away from community norms and reduce comprehension. Yet, limited exposure improves comprehension. This perceptual adaptation indicates that the mapping from acoustics to speech representations is dynamic, rather than fixed. But, what drives adjustments is debated. Supervised learning accounts posit that activation of an internal speech representation via disambiguating information generates predictions about patterns of speech input typically associated with the representation. When actual input mismatches predictions, the mapping is adjusted. We tested two hypotheses of this account across consonants and vowels as listeners categorized speech conveying an English-like acoustic regularity or an artificial accent. Across conditions, signal manipulations impacted which of two acoustic dimensions best conveyed category identity, and predicted which dimension would exhibit the effects of perceptual adaptation. Moreover, the strength of phonetic category activation, as estimated by categorization responses reliant on the dominant acoustic dimension, predicted the magnitude of adaptation observed across listeners. The results align with predictions of supervised learning accounts, suggesting that perceptual adaptation arises from speech category activation, corresponding predictions about the patterns of acoustic input that align with the category, and adjustments in subsequent speech perception when input mismatches these expectations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).