Listeners' reactions to misarticulation: a methodological investigation

It has been shown that listeners react negatively to speakers with abnormal articulation. There is no evidence indicating whether the actual placement of the occurrence of a misarticulation in a passage influences listeners' reactions. Subjects in this study heard a 98-word recording of a speaker feigning a misarticulation of /1/. One group of 20 subjects heard the misarticulation within the first five words of the recording. A second group heard the misarticulation within the first five words of the recording. All subjects rated the speaker on 13 bipolar scales, representing three dimensions of judgment. Findings indicate that the recorded samples were not rated differently. This placement of the token error did not influence subjects' judgments of the speaker.