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Two experiments investigated effects of sleep on consolidation and integration of novel form-meaning mappings using size congruity and semantic distance paradigms. Both paradigms have been used in previous studies to measure automatic access to word meanings. When participants compare semantic or physical font size of written word-pairs (e.g. BEE-COW), judgments are typically faster if relative sizes are congruent across both dimensions. Semantic distance effects are also found for wellestablished words, with semantic size judgements faster for pairs that differ substantially on this dimension. English-speaking participants learned novel form-meaning mappings with Mandarin (Experiment 1) or Malay (Experiment 2) words and were tested following overnight sleep or a similar duration awake. Judgements on English words controlled for circadian effects. The sleep group demonstrated selective stronger size congruity and semantic distance effects for novel word-pairs. This benefit occurred in Experiment 1 for semantic size comparisons of novel words, and in Experiment 2 on comparisons where novel pairs had large distances and font differences (for congruity effects) or in congruent trials (for semantic distance effects). Conversely, these effects were equivalent across sleep and wake for English words. Experiment 2 included polysomnography data and revealed that changes in the strength of semantic distance and congruity effects were positively correlated with slow-wave sleep and sleep spindles respectively. These findings support systems consolidation accounts of declarative learning and suggest that sleep plays an active role in integrating new words with existing knowledge, resulting in increased automatic access of the acquired knowledge., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The Stroop task is an excellent tool to test whether reading a word automatically activates its associated meaning, and it has been widely used in mono- and bilingual contexts. Despite of its ubiquity, the task has not yet been employed to test the automaticity of recently established word-concept links in novel-word-learning studies, under strict experimental control of learning and testing conditions. In three experiments, we thus paired novel words with native language (German) color words via lexical association and subsequently tested these words in a manual version of the Stroop task. Two crucial findings emerged: When novel word Stroop trials appeared intermixed among native-word trials, the novel-word Stroop effect was observed immediately after the learning phase. If no native color words were present in a Stroop block, the novel-word Stroop effect only emerged 24 h later. These results suggest that the automatic availability of a novel word's meaning depends either on supportive context from the learning episode and/or on sufficient time for memory consolidation. We discuss how these results can be reconciled with the complementary learning systems account of word learning.

Models of spoken-word recognition differ on whether compensation for assimilation is language-specific or depends on general auditory processing. English and French participants were taught words that began or ended with the sibilants /s/ and /∫/. Both languages exhibit some assimilation in sibilant sequences (e.g., /s/ becomes like [∫] in dress shop and classe chargée), but they differ in the strength and predominance of anticipatory versus carryover assimilation. After training, participants were presented with novel words embedded in sentences, some of which contained an assimilatory context either preceding or following. A continuum of target sounds ranging from [s] to [∫] was spliced into the novel words, representing a range of possible assimilation strengths. Listeners' perceptions were examined using a visual-world eyetracking paradigm in which the listener clicked on pictures matching the novel words. We found two distinct language-general context effects: a contrastive effect when the assimilating context preceded the target, and flattening of the sibilant categorization function (increased ambiguity) when the assimilating context followed. Furthermore, we found that English but not French listeners were able to resolve the ambiguity created by the following assimilatory context, consistent with their greater experience with assimilation in this context. The combination of these mechanisms allows listeners to deal flexibly with variability in speech forms.

The constraints that govern acceptable phoneme combinations in speech perception and production have considerable plasticity. We addressed whether sleep influences the acquisition of new constraints and their integration into the speech-production system. Participants repeated sequences of syllables in which two phonemes were artificially restricted to syllable onset or syllable coda, depending on the vowel in that sequence. After 48 sequences, participants either had a 90-min nap or remained awake. Participants then repeated 96 sequences so implicit constraint learning could be examined, and then were tested for constraint generalization in a forced-choice task. The sleep group, but not the wake group, produced speech errors at test that were consistent with restrictions on the placement of phonemes in training. Furthermore, only the sleep group generalized their learning to new materials. Polysomnography data showed that implicit constraint learning was associated with slow-wave sleep. These results show that sleep facilitates the integration of new linguistic knowledge with existing production constraints. These data have relevance for systems-consolidation models of sleep., (© The Author(s) 2014.)

Several accounts of speech perception propose that the areas involved in producing language are also involved in perceiving it. In line with this view, neuroimaging studies show activation of premotor cortex (PMC) during phoneme judgment tasks; however, there is debate about whether speech perception necessarily involves motor processes, across all task contexts, or whether the contribution of PMC is restricted to tasks requiring explicit phoneme awareness. Some aspects of speech processing, such as mapping sounds onto meaning, may proceed without the involvement of motor speech areas if PMC specifically contributes to the manipulation and categorical perception of phonemes. We applied TMS to three sites-PMC, posterior superior temporal gyrus, and occipital pole-and for the first time within the TMS literature, directly contrasted two speech perception tasks that required explicit phoneme decisions and mapping of speech sounds onto semantic categories, respectively. TMS to PMC disrupted explicit phonological judgments but not access to meaning for the same speech stimuli. TMS to two further sites confirmed that this pattern was site specific and did not reflect a generic difference in the susceptibility of our experimental tasks to TMS: stimulation of pSTG, a site involved in auditory processing, disrupted performance in both language tasks, whereas stimulation of occipital pole had no effect on performance in either task. These findings demonstrate that, although PMC is important for explicit phonological judgments, crucially, PMC is not necessary for mapping speech onto meanings.

Learning a new word involves integration with existing lexical knowledge. Previous work has shown that sleep-associated memory consolidation processes are important for the engagement of novel items in lexical competition. In 3 experiments we used spaced exposure regimes to investigate memory for novel words and whether lexical integration can occur within a single day. The degree to which a new spoken word (e.g., cathedruke) engaged in lexical competition with established phonological neighbors (e.g., cathedral) was employed as a marker for lexical integration. We found evidence for improvements in recognition and cued recall following a time period including sleep, but we also found lexical competition effects emerging within a single day. Spaced exposure to novel words on its own did not bring about this within-day lexical competition effect (Experiment 2), which instead occurred with either spaced or massed exposure to novel words, provided that there was also spaced exposure to the phonological neighbors (Experiments 1 and 3). Although previous studies have indicated that sleep-dependent memory consolidation may be sufficient for lexical integration, our results show it is not a necessary precondition., ((c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.)

We sought to establish whether novel words can become integrated into existing semantic networks by teaching participants new meaningful words and then using these new words as primes in two semantic priming experiments, in which participants carried out a lexical decision task to familiar words. Importantly, at no point in training did the novel words co-occur with the familiar words that served as targets in the primed lexical decision task, allowing us to evaluate semantic priming in the absence of direct association. We found that familiar words were primed by the newly related novel words, both when the novel word prime was unmasked (experiment 1) and when it was masked (experiment 2), suggesting that the new words had been integrated into semantic memory. Furthermore, this integration was strongest after a 1-week delay and was independent of explicit recall of the novel word meanings: Forgetting of meanings did not attenuate priming. We argue that even after brief training, newly learned words become an integrated part of the adult mental lexicon rather than being episodically represented separately from the lexicon.

Changes to our everyday activities mean that adult language users need to learn new meanings for previously unambiguous words. For example, we need to learn that a "tweet" is not only the sound a bird makes, but also a short message on a social networking site. In these experiments, adult participants learned new fictional meanings for words with a single dominant meaning (e.g., "ant") by reading paragraphs that described these novel meanings. Explicit recall of these meanings was significantly better when there was a strong semantic relationship between the novel meaning and the existing meaning. This relatedness effect emerged after relatively brief exposure to the meanings (experiment 1), but it persisted when training was extended across 7 days (experiment 2) and when semantically demanding tasks were used during this extended training (experiment 3). A lexical decision task was used to assess the impact of learning on online recognition. In Experiment 3, participants responded more quickly to words whose new meaning was semantically related than to those with an unrelated meaning. This result is consistent with earlier studies showing an effect of meaning relatedness on lexical decision, and it indicates that these newly acquired meanings become integrated with participants' preexisting knowledge about the meanings of words.

The present study investigated the lexical representations underlying the production of English schwa words. Two types of schwa words were compared: words with a schwa in poststress position (e.g., mackerel), whose schwa and reduced variants differ in a categorical way, and words with a schwa in prestress position (e.g., salami), whose variants differ in a noncategorical way. Participants named pseudohomophones and matched pseudowords corresponding to schwa and reduced variants of these words. Results revealed an advantage for pseudohomophones over matched pseudowords for both variants of poststress schwa words but only for schwa variants of prestress schwa words. As the pseudohomophone advantage is assumed to reflect the activation of a phonologically matching stored phonological representation, these results suggest that both variants of poststress schwa words are lexically represented while only schwa variants of prestress schwa words are. This result extends the proposal that words with two categorically distinct variants are stored in the production lexicon with 2 representations to another language and demonstrates that this 2-lexeme account does not generalize to pronunciation variants differing from one another in a noncategorical fashion. This finding challenges one of the widely shared assumption of generative models of word production: that content words have only 1 phonological representation. On the other hand, it provides further evidence in favor of another fundamental assumption of these models: that lexical representations are abstract sets of segments rather than fully detailed exemplars., ((c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved.)

Many studies have repeatedly shown an orthographic consistency effect in the auditory lexical decision task. Words with phonological rimes that could be spelled in multiple ways (i.e., inconsistent words) typically produce longer auditory lexical decision latencies and more errors than do words with rimes that could be spelled in only one way (i.e., consistent words). These results have been extended to different languages and tasks, suggesting that the effect is quite general and robust. Despite this growing body of evidence, some psycholinguists believe that orthographic effects on spoken language are exclusively strategic, post-lexical, or restricted to peculiar (low-frequency) words. In the present study, we manipulated consistency and word-frequency orthogonally in order to explore whether the orthographic consistency effect extends to high-frequency words. Two different tasks were used: lexical decision and rime detection. Both tasks produced reliable consistency effects for both low- and high-frequency words. Furthermore, in Experiment 1 (lexical decision), an interaction revealed a stronger consistency effect for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words, as initially predicted by Ziegler and Ferrand (1998), whereas no interaction was found in Experiment 2 (rime detection). Our results extend previous findings by showing that the orthographic consistency effect is obtained not only for low-frequency words but also for high-frequency words. Furthermore, these effects were also obtained in a rime detection task, which does not require the explicit processing of orthographic structure. Globally, our results suggest that literacy changes the way people process spoken words, even for frequent words.

Sleep spindle activity has been associated with improvements in procedural and declarative memory. Here, for the first time, we looked at the role of spindles in the integration of newly learned information with existing knowledge, contrasting this with explicit recall of the new information. Two groups of participants learned novel spoken words (e.g., cathedruke) that overlapped phonologically with familiar words (e.g., cathedral). The sleep group was exposed to the novel words in the evening, followed by an initial test, a polysomnographically monitored night of sleep, and a second test in the morning. The wake group was exposed and initially tested in the morning and spent a retention interval of similar duration awake. Finally, both groups were tested a week later at the same circadian time to control for possible circadian effects. In the sleep group, participants recalled more words and recognized them faster after sleep, whereas in the wake group such changes were not observed until the final test 1 week later. Following acquisition of the novel words, recognition of the familiar words was slowed in both groups, but only after the retention interval, indicating that the novel words had been integrated into the mental lexicon following consolidation. Importantly, spindle activity was associated with overnight lexical integration in the sleep group, but not with gains in recall rate or recognition speed of the novel words themselves. Spindle activity appears to be particularly important for overnight integration of new memories with existing neocortical knowledge.

Word learning is one of the core components of language acquisition. In this article, we provide an overview of the theme issue on word learning, describing some of the ways in which research in the area has progressed and diverged. In recent years, word learning has become central in a wider range of research areas, and is important to research on adult, as well as child and infant language. We introduce 10 papers that cover the recent developments from a wide range of perspectives, focusing on developmental research, the influence of reading skills, neuroimaging and the relationship between word learning and general models of memory.

In this paper we present a novel theory of the cognitive and neural processes by which adults learn new spoken words. This proposal builds on neurocomputational accounts of lexical processing and spoken word recognition and complementary learning systems (CLS) models of memory. We review evidence from behavioural studies of word learning that, consistent with the CLS account, show two stages of lexical acquisition: rapid initial familiarization followed by slow lexical consolidation. These stages map broadly onto two systems involved in different aspects of word learning: (i) rapid, initial acquisition supported by medial temporal and hippocampal learning, (ii) slower neocortical learning achieved by offline consolidation of previously acquired information. We review behavioural and neuroscientific evidence consistent with this account, including a meta-analysis of PET and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies that contrast responses to spoken words and pseudowords. From this meta-analysis we derive predictions for the location and direction of cortical response changes following familiarization with pseudowords. This allows us to assess evidence for learning-induced changes that convert pseudoword responses into real word responses. Results provide unique support for the CLS account since hippocampal responses change during initial learning, whereas cortical responses to pseudowords only become word-like if overnight consolidation follows initial learning.

Two experiments explored the neural mechanisms underlying the learning and consolidation of novel spoken words. In Experiment 1, participants learned two sets of novel words on successive days. A subsequent recognition test revealed high levels of familiarity for both sets. However, a lexical decision task showed that only novel words learned on the previous day engaged in lexical competition with similar-sounding existing words. Additionally, only novel words learned on the previous day exhibited faster repetition latencies relative to unfamiliar controls. This overnight consolidation effect was further examined using fMRI to compare neural responses to existing and novel words learned on different days prior to scanning (Experiment 2). This revealed an elevated response for novel compared with existing words in left superior temporal gyrus (STG), inferior frontal and premotor regions, and right cerebellum. Cortical activation was of equivalent magnitude for unfamiliar novel words and items learned on the day of scanning but significantly reduced for novel words learned on the previous day. In contrast, hippocampal responses were elevated for novel words that were entirely unfamiliar, and this elevated response correlated with postscanning behavioral measures of word learning. These findings are consistent with a dual-learning system account in which there is a division of labor between medial-temporal systems that are involved in initial acquisition and neocortical systems in which representations of novel spoken words are subject to overnight consolidation.

The present study investigated the mechanisms underlying perceptual compensation for assimilation in novel words. During training, participants learned canonical versions of novel spoken words (e.g., decibot) presented in isolation. Following exposure to a second set of novel words the next day, participants carried out a phoneme monitoring task. Here, the novel words were presented with final alternations (e.g., decibop) in carrier sentences that either licensed assimilation (viable context: Our decibop behaved badly) or did not (unviable context: Our decibop does very well). Listeners had to monitor for the underlying form of the assimilated consonant (e.g., /t/ in decibop). Results showed more responses corresponding to the underlying form in viable than in unviable contexts. This viability effect was equivalent for novel words learned on the same day and on the previous day but was absent for unexposed control items. The processing difference between exposed and control novel words supports the idea that compensation for assimilation interacts with newly acquired phonological information and suggests that contextual compensation for assimilation is enhanced by lexical knowledge., ((c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Models of compensation for phonological variation in spoken word recognition differ in their ability to accommodate complete assimilatory alternations (such as run assimilating fully to rum in the context of a quick run picks you up). Two experiments addressed whether such complete changes can be observed in casual speech, and if so, whether they trigger perceptual compensation. Experiment 1 used recordings of naive speakers and found that the presence of following context supporting place assimilation led to an increase in miscommunication rate when listeners were asked to identify the potentially assimilated words. This result was also obtained when trained phoneticians gave their considered judgments of a subset of the stimuli. Experiment 2 examined the extent to which words articulated correctly by naive speakers (e.g., rum) would be perceived as assimilated and found that compensation for assimilation in these stimuli depended on the type of following phonemic context and the semantic fit with the preceding sentence. These results suggest that place assimilation does involve complete alternations and that the perceptual system can compensate for them in certain circumstances.

Four experiments used the psychological refractory period logic to examine whether integration of multiple sources of phonemic information has a decisional locus. All experiments made use of a dual-task paradigm in which participants made forced-choice color categorization (Task 1) and phoneme categorization (Task 2) decisions at varying stimulus onset asynchronies. In Experiment 1, Task 2 difficulty was manipulated using words containing matching or mismatching coarticulatory cues to the final consonant. The results showed that difficulty and onset asynchrony combined in an underadditive way, suggesting that the phonemic mismatch was resolved prior to a central decisional bottleneck. Similar results were found in Experiment 2 using nonwords. In Experiment 3, the manipulation of task difficulty involved lexical status, which once again revealed an underadditive pattern of response times. Finally, Experiment 4 compared this prebottleneck variable with a decisional variable: response key bias. The latter showed an additive pattern of responses. The experiments show that resolution of phonemic ambiguity can take advantage of cognitive slack time at short asynchronies, indicating that phonemic integration takes place at a relatively early stage of spoken word recognition., ((c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

Newly learned spoken words (e.g., "cathedruke") become fully engaged in the mental lexicon, as measured via lexical competition with their pre-existing phonological neighbours (e.g., "cathedral"), over the course of several hours or days, and this lexical restructuring is associated with sleep (Dumay & Gaskell, 2007). Here, we investigated the longer-term effects of word learning for three sets of novel words learned at different times using phoneme monitoring and repetition tasks. The effects of these exposure sessions on lexical memory were assessed in a battery of tests. Lexical decision latencies to pre-existing neighbouring words showed that lexical competition effects for the novel words remained observable 8 months after initial exposure. Furthermore, the order-of-acquisition of the novel words affected their production speed (but not recognition speed), with an advantage for earlier acquired words. The results suggest that the consolidation of novel words results in a long-term and stable change in the lexical competition process.

Three experiments examined the involvement of orthography in spoken word processing using a task - unimodal auditory priming with offset overlap - taken to reflect activation of prelexical representations. Two types of prime-target relationship were compared; both involved phonological overlap, but only one had a strong orthographic overlap (e.g., dream-gleam vs. scheme-gleam). In Experiment 1, which used lexical decision, phonological overlap facilitated target responses in comparison with an unrelated condition (e.g., stove-gleam). More importantly, facilitation was modulated by degree of orthographic overlap. Experiment 2 employed the same design as Experiment 1, but with a modified procedure aimed at eliciting swifter responses. Again, the phonological priming effect was sensitive to the degree of orthographic overlap between prime and target. Finally, to test whether this orthographic boost was caused by congruency between response type and valence of the prime-target overlap, Experiment 3 used a pseudoword detection task, in which participants responded "yes" to novel words and "no" to known words. Once again phonological priming was observed, with a significant boost in the orthographic overlap condition. These results indicate a surprising level of orthographic involvement in speech perception, and provide clear evidence for mandatory orthographic activation during spoken word recognition.

The integration of a newly learned spoken word form with existing knowledge in the mental lexicon is characterized by the word form's ability to compete with similar-sounding entries during auditory word recognition. Here we show that although the mere acquisition of a spoken form is swift, its engagement in lexical competition requires an incubation-like period that is crucially associated with sleep. Words learned at 8 p.m. do not induce (inhibitory) competition effects immediately, but do so after a 12-hr interval including a night's sleep, and continue to induce such effects after 24 hr. In contrast, words learned at 8 a.m. do not show such effects immediately or after 12 hr of wakefulness, but show the effects only after 24 hr, after sleep has occurred. This time-course dissociation is best accommodated by connectionist and neural models of learning in which sleep provides an opportunity for hippocampal information to be fed into long-term neocortical memory.

The authors report 3 dual-task experiments concerning the locus of frequency effects in word recognition. In all experiments, Task 1 entailed a simple perceptual choice and Task 2 involved lexical decision. In Experiment 1, an underadditive effect of word frequency arose for spoken words. Experiment 2 also showed underadditivity for visual lexical decision. It was concluded that word frequency exerts an influence prior to any dual-task bottleneck. A related finding in similar dual-task experiments is Task 2 response postponement at short stimulus onset asynchronies. This was explored in Experiment 3, and it was shown that response postponement was equivalent for both spoken and visual word recognition. These results imply that frequency-sensitive processes operate early and automatically., (((c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).)

Three experiments examined the involvement of newly learnt words in lexical competition. Adult participants were familiarized with novel nonsense sequences that overlapped strongly with existing words (e.g. cathedruke, derived from cathedral) through repeated presentation in a phoneme-monitoring task. Experiment 1 looked at the immediate effects of exposure to these sequences, with participants showing familiarity with the form of the novel sequences in a two-alternative forced choice task. The effect of this exposure on lexical competition was examined by presenting the existing words (e.g. cathedral) in a lexical decision task. The immediate effect of the exposure was facilitatory, suggesting that the novel words had activated the representation of the closest real word rather than developing their own lexical representations. In Experiment 2, inhibitory lexical competition effects emerged over the course of 5 days for offset-diverging (e.g. cathedruke-cathedral) but not onset-diverging (e.g. yothedral-cathedral) novel words. Experiment 3 disentangled the roles of time and level-of-exposure in the lexicalization process and assessed the generality of the observed lexical inhibition using pause detection. A single, concentrated exposure session was used, which resulted in good recognition performance soon after. Lexicalization effects were absent immediately after exposure but emerged 1 week later, despite no intervening exposure to the novel items. These results suggest that integrating a novel word into the mental lexicon can be an extended process: phonological information is learnt swiftly, but full integration with existing items develops at a slower rate.

A recent study showed that the pronunciation of the definite article in English (as either a reduced "thuh" or an unreduced "thee") depends on a number of different factors, including the pronunciation, spelling, and stress assignment of the following word (Raymond, Fisher, & Healy, 2002). However, it is not clear from previous research whether these factors influenced performance implicitly in normal speech production or whether explicit knowledge of the object of the experiment was relied on. In Experiment 1, we examined implicit performance on pronunciation of the definite article and found more systematic behavior than had previously been observed but, again, an influence of the pronunciation, spelling, and stress assignment of the following word. In Experiment 2, we tested the influence of the following word on definite article production during language development for two groups of children 8 and 10 years of age. This experiment showed increasing use of the unreduced form during development and a further influence of orthography. We interpret these results in terms of an interaction between perception and production in which the production system makes use of generalizations on the basis of both phonological and orthographic representations generated in perception.

We present data from four experiments using cross-modal priming to examine the effects of competitor environment on lexical activation during the time course of the perception of a spoken word. The research is conducted from the perspective of a distributed model of speech perception and lexical representation, which focuses on activation at the level of lexical content. In this model, the strength of competition between simultaneously active lexical items depends on the degree of coherence between their distributed semantic and phonological representations. Consistent with this model, interference effects are more complete when the purely semantic aspects of these coactive representations are probed (using semantic priming) than when phonological aspects are probed as well (using repetition priming).

In three experiments, we examined the effects of phonological resyllabification processes on the perception of French speech. Enchainment involves the resyllabification of a word-final consonant across a syllable boundary (e.g., in chaque avion, the /k/ crosses the syllable boundary to become syllable initial). Liaison involves a further process of realization of a latent consonant, alongside resyllabification (e.g., the /t/ in petit avion). If the syllable is a dominant unit of perception in French (Mehler, Dommergues, Frauenfelder, & Segui, 1981), these processes should cause problems for recognition of the following word. A cross-modal priming experiment showed no cost attached to either type of resyllabification in terms of reduced activation of the following word. Furthermore, word- and sequence-monitoring experiments again showed no cost and suggested that the recognition of vowel-initial words may be facilitated when they are preceded by a word that had undergone resyllabification through enchainment or liaison. We examine the sources of information that could underpin facilitation and propose a refinement of the syllable's role in the perception of French speech.

Cross-modal priming experiments have shown that surface variations in speech are perceptually tolerated as long as they occur in phonologically viable contexts. For example, [symbol: see text] (frayp) gains access to the mental representation of freight when in the context of [symbol: see text] (frayp bearer) because the change occurs in normal speech as a process of place assimilation. The locus of these effects in the perceptual system was examined. Sentences containing surface changes were created that either agreed with or violated assimilation rules. The lexical status of the assimilated word also was manipulated, contrasting lexical and nonlexical accounts. Two phoneme monitoring experiments showed strong effects of phonological viability for words, with weaker effects for nonwords. It is argued that the listener's percept of the form of speech is a product of a phonological inference process that recovers the underlying form of speech. This process can operate on both words and nonwords, although it interacts with the retrieval of lexical information.

Recent experiments have indicated that lexical access in speech is highly intolerant of mismatch. An isolated sequence such as [symbol: see text] strongly disrupts access to the underlying lexical entry (wicked). This observation seems inconsistent with the systematic variability found in the phonetic form of words. Two cross-modal priming experiments tested the hypothesis that phonologically regular variation is perceptually acceptable. Participants heard tokens like [symbol: see text] embedded in contexts that either licensed the change as a result of a regular assimilation process (e.g., [symbol: see text]) or rendered the change phonologically unviable (e.g., [symbol: see text]). The tokens with contextually unviable deviations did not effectively access lexical representations. In contrast, the same tokens in viable phonological context primed as strongly as unchanged controls. These results suggest that mapping speech onto lexical representations involves on-line phonological inference.