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The authors examined the role of intermediate, sublexical representations in spoken word perception. In particular, they tested whether flaps, which are neutralized allophones of intervocalic /t/s and /d/s, map onto their underlying phonemic counterparts. In 2 shadowing tasks, the authors found that flaps primed their carefully articulated counterparts, and vice versa. Because none of the flapped stimuli were lexically ambiguous (e.g., between rater and raider), these results provide evidence that such priming is sublexically mediated. Therefore, the current study provides further insights into when underlying form-based representations are activated during spoken word processing. In particular, the authors argue that phonological ambiguity, inherent in their flapped stimuli, is one of the conditions leading to the activation of underlying representations.

Investigated the effects of semantic predictability on children's preservation of the /t/-/d/ phonemic voice contrast. Children in three age groups completed testing. Twelve adults acted as controls. There were age-related effects in the influence of semantic predictability on the preservation of a phonemic voice contrast. Differences produced by speakers did not necessarily have a functional role for listeners. (SM)

Examines issues relating to similarity neighborhoods of words in children's lexicons. Young children's receptive vocabularies were analyzed for three-phoneme, four-phoneme and five-phoneme words. The pattern of the original results from Charles-Luce & Luce (1990) was replicated. (18 references) (Author/CK)

Similarity neighborhoods for words in young children's lexicons were investigated using three computerized databases. Results revealed that words in five- and seven-year-olds' lexicons have many fewer similar neighbors. (Author/CB)

The authors examined the role of intermediate, sublexical representations in spoken word perception. In particular, they tested whether flaps, which are neutralized allophones of intervocalic /t/s and /d/s, map onto their underlying phonemic counterparts. In 2 shadowing tasks, the authors found that flaps primed their carefully articulated counterparts, and vice versa. Because none of the flapped stimuli were lexically ambiguous (e.g., between rater and raider), these results provide evidence that such priming is sublexically mediated. Therefore, the current study provides further insights into when underlying form-based representations are activated during spoken word processing. In particular, the authors argue that phonological ambiguity, inherent in their flapped stimuli, is one of the conditions leading to the activation of underlying representations. Keywords: lexical, sublexical, phonological ambiguity, allophonic specificity, spoken word recognition

The authors attempted to determine whether surface representations of spoken words are mapped onto underlying, abstract representations. In particular, they tested the hypothesis that flaps--neutralized allophones of intervocalic /t/s and/d/s--are mapped onto their underlying phonemic counterparts. In 6 repetition priming experiments, participants responded to stimuli in 2 blocks of trials. Stimuli in the 1st block served as primes and those in the 2nd as targets. Primes and targets consisted of English words containing intervocalic /t/s and /d/s that, when produced casually, were flapped. In all 6 experiments, reaction times to target items were measured as a function of prime type. The results provide evidence for both surface and underlying form-based representations.

Acoustic measurements were conducted to determine the degree to which vowel duration, closure duration, and their ratio distinguish voicing of word-final stop consonants across variations in sentential and phonetic environments. Subjects read CVC test words containing three different vowels and ending in stops of three different places of articulation. The test words were produced either in nonphrase-final or phrase-final position and in several local phonetic environments within each of these sentence positions. Our measurements revealed that vowel duration most consistently distinguished voicing categories for the test words. Closure duration failed to consistently distinguish voicing categories across the contextual variables manipulated, as did the ratio of closure and vowel duration. Our results suggest that vowel duration is the most reliable correlate of voicing for word-final stops in connected speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]