An empirical and meta-analytic evaluation of the phoneme identification task

Recent studies that used Ganong's (1980) identification task have produced discrepant results. The present study sought to resolve these discrepancies by examining the influence of methodological factors on phoneme identification and differences in data analysis techniques. Three factors were examined across 2 experiments: position of target phoneme, phonetic contrast, and 2 task conditions in which stimulus quality (S/N ratio) or cognitive load varied. A meta-analysis was then performed on the results from all identification studies, including the present one, in an effort to obtain additional insight on factors that influence the task. The experiments and meta-analysis identified the importance of several methodological factors in affecting identification, most notably position of the target phoneme.