Speech Sound Categories Affect Lexical Competition: Implications for Analytic Auditory Training

We provide a novel application of psycholinguistic theories and methods to the field of auditory training to provide preliminary data regarding which minimal pair contrasts are more difficult for listeners with typical hearing to distinguish in real-time.

Using eye-tracking, participants heard a word and selected the corresponding image from a display of four: the target word, two unrelated words, and a word from one of four contrast categories (i.e., voiced-initial [e.g., peach-beach], voiced-final [e.g., back-bag], manner-initial [e.g., talk-sock], and manner-final [e.g., bat-bass]).

Fixations were monitored to measure how strongly words compete for recognition depending on the contrast type (voicing, manner) and location (word-initial or final). Manner contrasts competed more for recognition than did voicing contrasts, and contrasts that occurred in word-final position were harder to distinguish than word-initial position.

These results are an important initial step toward creating an evidence-based hierarchy for auditory training for individuals who use cochlear implants.