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During spoken word recognition, listeners must quickly map sounds to meaning while suppressing competitors. It remains unclear whether domain-general inhibitory control is recruited for resolving lexical competition. Cochlear implant (CI) users present a unique population for addressing this question because they are consistently confronted with degraded auditory input, and may need to rely on domain-general mechanisms to compensate. We examined word recognition in adult CI users who were prelingually deaf (lost their hearing in childhood, N = 21), postlingually deaf (lost their hearing in adulthood, N = 50), and normal hearing controls (NH; N = 71). Participants recognised words during an eye-tracking task and completed an inhibitory control task. CI users were slower to recognise words and did not resolve competition as fully. Better inhibitory control predicted faster word activation in NH controls and postlingual, but not prelingual, CI users. Prolonged experience with acoustic language may thus influence how domain-general mechanisms are recruited for language processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phonetic processing, whereby the bottom-up speech signal is translated into higher-level phonological representations such as phonemes, has been demonstrated to be influenced by phonological lexical neighborhoods. Previous studies show facilitatory effects of lexicality and phonological neighborhood density on phonetic categorization. However, given the evidence for lexical competition in spoken word recognition, we hypothesize that there are concurrent facilitatory and inhibitory effects of phonological lexical neighborhoods on phonetic processing. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants categorized the onset phoneme in word-nonword and nonword-word acoustic continua. The results show that the target word of the continuum exhibits facilitatory lexical influences whereas rhyme neighbors inhibit phonetic categorization. The results support the hypothesis that sublexical phonetic processing is affected by multiple facilitatory and inhibitory lexical forces in the processing stream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do cognitive pressures shape the lexicons of natural languages? Here, we reframe George Kingsley Zipf's proposed "law of abbreviation" within a more general framework that relates it to cognitive pressures that affect speakers and listeners. In this new framework, speakers' drive to reduce effort (Zipf's proposal) is counteracted by the need for low‐frequency words to have word forms that are sufficiently distinctive to allow for accurate recognition by listeners. To support this framework, we replicate and extend recent work using the prevalence of subword phonemic sequences (phonotactic probability) to measure speakers' production effort in place of Zipf's measure of length. Across languages and corpora, phonotactic probability is more strongly correlated with word frequency than word length. We also show this measure of ease of speech production (phonotactic probability) is strongly correlated with a measure of perceptual difficulty that indexes the degree of competition from alternative interpretations in word recognition. This is consistent with the claim that there must be trade‐offs between these two factors, and is inconsistent with a recent proposal that phonotactic probability facilitates both perception and production. To our knowledge, this is the first work to offer an explanation why long, phonotactically improbable word forms remain in the lexicons of natural languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined for the first time the impact of the presence of a phonological neighbour on word recognition when the target word and its neighbour co-occur in a spoken sentence. To do so, we developed a new task, the verb detection task, in which participants were instructed to respond as soon as they detected a verb in a sequence of words, thus allowing us to probe spoken word recognition processes in real time. We found that participants were faster at detecting a verb when it was phonologically related to the preceding noun than when it was phonologically unrelated. This effect was found with both correct sentences (Experiment 1) and with ungrammatical sequences of words (Experiment 2). The effect was also found in Experiment 3 where adjacent phonologically related words were included in the non-verb condition (i.e., word sequences not containing a verb), thus ruling out any strategic influences. These results suggest that activation persists across different words during spoken sentence processing such that processing of a word at position n + 1 benefits from the sublexical phonology activated during processing of the word at position n. We discuss how different models of spoken word recognition might be able (or not) to account for these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neural oscillations reflect fluctuations in excitability, which biases the percept of ambiguous sensory input. Why this bias occurs is still not fully understood. We hypothesized that neural populations representing likely events are more sensitive, and thereby become active on earlier oscillatory phases, when the ensemble itself is less excitable. Perception of ambiguous input presented during less-excitable phases should therefore be biased toward frequent or predictable stimuli that have lower activation thresholds. Here, we show such a frequency bias in spoken word recognition using psychophysics, magnetoencephalography (MEG), and computational modelling. With MEG, we found a double dissociation, where the phase of oscillations in the superior temporal gyrus and medial temporal gyrus biased word-identification behavior based on phoneme and lexical frequencies, respectively. This finding was reproduced in a computational model. These results demonstrate that oscillations provide a temporal ordering of neural activity based on the sensitivity of separable neural populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined whether intelligibility-enhancing hyperarticulated clear speaking styles improve word segmentation during real-time speech processing in quiet and in noise. English-speaking listeners heard clearly and conversationally spoken sentences in which the target (e.g. ham) was temporarily ambiguous with a competitor (e.g. hamster) across a word boundary (e.g. ham starting) while their eye fixations to target and competitor images were recorded. Relative to conversational speech, clear speech led listeners to fixate the target image over the competitor image to a greater degree, indicating facilitation of word segmentation. Such facilitation emerged in quiet and in noise even before disambiguating segmental information (e.g. /ɑ/ in starting) was available. A parallel clear speech benefit was not found when the disyllabic word (e.g. hamster) was the target. The findings suggest that improved word segmentation partly underlies the well-documented clear speech perceptual and cognitive benefits and may arise from the enhancements of multiple word boundary cues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present study is to investigate the impact of proficiency in the second language (L2) on the neurocognitive processes that support the recognition of spoken words. Chinese native learners of English (N = 34) took part in the picture-word matching task and the AX Continuous Performance Test (AX-CPT). In the picture-word matching task, the component amplitudes for P50, N120, and P200 were found to be lower in the low proficiency group compared to the high proficiency group. Regarding the AX-CPT, the high-proficiency group exhibited a more balanced utilisation of proactive and reactive control, whereas the low-proficiency group displayed a greater reliance on proactive control. Additionally, a correlation was observed between various ERP components from the picture-word matching task and behavioural indicators obtained from the AX-CPT, suggesting different strategies of cognitive control may reflect the influence of language proficiency on neurocognitive mechanisms in spoken word recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we conducted an eye-tracking experiment to investigate the effects of sentence context and tonal information on spoken word recognition processes in Cantonese Chinese. We recruited 60 native Cantonese listeners to participate in the eye-tracking experiment. The target words (phonologically similar words) were manipulated to either (1) a congruent context or (2) an incongruent context in the experiment. The resulting eye-movement patterns in the incongruent context condition clearly revealed that (1) sentence context produced a garden-path effect in the initial stage of the spoken word recognition processes and then (2) the lexical tone of the word (bottom-up information) overrode the contextual effects to help listeners to discriminate between different similar-sounding words during lexical access. In conclusion, the patterns of eye-tracking data show the interactive processes between the lexical tone (an acoustic cue within a Cantonese word) and sentence context played in different phases to the spoken word recognition of Cantonese Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During difficult tasks, conflict can benefit performance on a subsequent trial. One theory for such performance adjustments is that people monitor for conflict and reactively engage cognitive control. This hypothesis has been challenged because tasks that control for associative learning do not show such "cognitive control" effects. The current study experimentally controlled associative learning by presenting a novel stimulus on every trial of a picture–speech conflict task and found that performance adjustments still occur. Thirty-one healthy young adults listened to and repeated words presented in background noise while viewing pictures that were congruent or incongruent (i.e., phonological neighbors) with the word. Following conflict, participants had higher word recognition (+17% points) on incongruent but not congruent trials. This result was not attributable to posterror effects nor a speed–accuracy trade-off. An analysis of erroneous responses showed that participants made more phonologically related errors than nonrelated errors only on incongruent trials, demonstrating elevated phonological conflict when the picture was a neighbor of the target word. Additionally, postconflict improvements appear to be due to better resolution of phonological conflict in the mental lexicon rather than decreased attention to the picture or increased attention to the speech signal. Our findings provide new evidence for conflict monitoring and suggest that cognitive control helps resolve phonological conflict during speech recognition in noise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech mixed with noise and speech that is of an unfamiliar variety both make the task of understanding more difficult. Children are often more negatively affected by these situations than adults. Numerous studies have examined the cognitive and linguistic skills that support spoken language processing. In the current study, we examine the contribution of linguistic exposure and various cognitive and linguistic skills for spoken word recognition of an unfamiliar variety of speech (German-accented English). The Ease of Language Understanding model predicts that working memory skills are needed in the most difficult listening situations. Two groups of school-age children were drawn from a larger sample: those with exposure to multiple languages in the home and those exposed to only English in the home. As predicted, working memory skills predicted performance for children with less varied linguistic experience (those only exposed to English in the home), but not for children with varied linguistic exposure. In contrast, linguistic skills predicted performance for children with more varied linguistic experience, even though the two groups did not differ overall in any of the assessed skills. These findings support the Ease of Language Understanding model of language processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Listeners have many sources of information available in interpreting speech. Numerous theoretical frameworks and paradigms have established that various constraints impact the processing of speech sounds, but it remains unclear how listeners might simultaneously consider multiple cues, especially those that differ qualitatively (i.e., with respect to timing and/or modality) or quantitatively (i.e., with respect to cue reliability). Here, we establish that cross-modal identity priming can influence the interpretation of ambiguous phonemes (Exp. 1, N = 40) and show that two qualitatively distinct cues – namely, cross-modal identity priming and auditory co-articulatory context – have additive effects on phoneme identification (Exp. 2, N = 40). However, we find no effect of quantitative variation in a cue – specifically, changes in the reliability of the priming cue did not influence phoneme identification (Exp. 3a, N = 40; Exp. 3b, N = 40). Overall, we find that qualitatively distinct cues can additively influence phoneme identification. While many existing theoretical frameworks address constraint integration to some degree, our results provide a step towards understanding how information that differs in both timing and modality is integrated in online speech perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans robustly associate spiky shapes to words like "Kiki" and round shapes to words like "Bouba." According to a popular explanation, this is because the mouth assumes an angular shape while speaking "Kiki" and a rounded shape for "Bouba." Alternatively, this effect could reflect more general associations between shape and sound that are not specific to mouth shape or articulatory properties of speech. These possibilities can be distinguished using unpronounceable sounds: The mouth-shape hypothesis predicts no Bouba-Kiki effect for these sounds, whereas the generic shape-sound hypothesis predicts a systematic effect. Here, we show that the Bouba–Kiki effect is present for a variety of unpronounceable sounds ranging from reversed words and real object sounds (n = 45 participants) and even pure tones (n = 28). The effect was strongly correlated with the mean frequency of a sound across both spoken and reversed words. The effect was not systematically predicted by subjective ratings of pronounceability or with mouth aspect ratios measured from video. Thus, the Bouba–Kiki effect is explained using simple shape-sound associations rather than using speech properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Familiarity with a talker's voice provides numerous benefits to speech perception, including faster responses and improved intelligibility in quiet and in noise. Yet, it is unclear whether familiarity facilitates talker adaptation, or the processing benefit stemming from hearing speech from one talker compared to multiple different talkers. Here, listeners completed a speeded recognition task for words presented in either single-talker or multiple-talker blocks. Talkers were either famous (the last five Presidents of the United States of America) or non-famous (other male politicians of similar ages). Participants either received no information about the talkers before the word recognition task (Experiments 1 and 3) or heard the talkers and saw their names first (Experiment 2). As expected, responses were faster in the single-talker blocks than in the multiple-talker blocks. Famous voices elicited faster responses in Experiment 1, but familiarity effects were extinguished in Experiment 2, possibly by hearing all voices recently before the experiment. When talkers were counterbalanced across single-talker and mixed-talker blocks in Experiment 3, no familiarity effects were observed. Predictions of familiarity facilitating talker adaptation (smaller increase in response times across single- and multiple-talker blocks for famous voices) were not confirmed. Thus, talker familiarity might not augment adaptation to a consistent talker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the extensive research on bilingual development, our understanding of how lexical competition unfolds in the bilingual mind remains limited. Previous studies have predominantly focused on crosslinguistic competition, neglecting the examination of the competition process within each language and the influence of diverse bilingual experiences, such as first language attriters, heritage speakers, or sequential bilinguals. Consequently, there is a critical gap in our knowledge regarding how bilinguals navigate and resolve competition dynamics during spoken word recognition in the context of language attrition. We compare the within-L1 and within-L2 competition mechanisms of Spanish-English attriters (N = 65) with two monolingual control groups (Spanish and English speakers). Participants completed two visual world tasks with manipulation of onset/rhyme overlap. Results indicate a contrast between the competition mechanisms exhibited by the L1 monolingual group and the Spanish attriters during L1 spoken word recognition. Our findings highlight the role of bilingual experiences in modulating L1 competition dynamics, shedding light on the complex relationship between bilingualism and lexical competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While known to influence visual lexical processing, the semantic information we associate with words has recently been found to influence auditory lexical processing as well. The present work explored the influence of semantic richness in auditory lexical decision. Study 1 recreated an experiment investigating semantic richness effects in concrete nouns (Goh et al., 2016). In Study 2, we expanded the stimulus set from 442 to 8,626 items, exploring the robustness of effects observed in Study 1 against a larger data set with increased diversity in both word class and other characteristics of interest. We also utilized generalized additive mixed models to investigate potential nonlinear effects. Results indicate that semantic richness effects become more nuanced and detectable when a wider set of items belonging to different parts of speech is examined. Findings are discussed in the context of models of spoken word recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic made face masks part of daily life. While masks protect against the virus, it is important to understand the impact masks have on listeners' recognition of spoken words. We examined spoken word recognition under three different mask conditions (no mask; cloth mask; Kn95 mask) and in both easy (low density, high phonotactic probability) and hard (high density, low phonotactic probability) words in a lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, participants heard all words and nonwords under all three mask conditions. In Experiment 2, participants heard each word and nonword only once under one of the mask conditions. The reaction time and accuracy results were consistent between Experiments 1 and 2. The pattern of results was such that the no mask condition produced the fastest and most accurate responses followed by the Kn95 mask condition and the cloth mask condition, respectively. Furthermore, there was a trend towards a speed-accuracy trade-off with Word Type. Easy words produced faster but less accurate responses relative to hard words. The finding that cloth masks had a more detrimental impact on spoken word recognition than Kn95 masks is consistent with previous research, and the current results further demonstrate that this effect extends to individual word recognition tasks with only audio presentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the current study was to assess the sensitivity, reliability and convergent validity of objective measures of listening effort collected in a sequential dual-task. On each trial, participants viewed a set of digits and listened to a spoken sentence presented at one of a range of signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) and then typed the sentence-final word and recalled the digits. Listening effort measures included word response time, digit recall accuracy and digit response time. In Experiment 1, SNR on each trial was randomised. In Experiment 2, SNR varied in a blocked design, and in each block self-reported listening effort was also collected. Separate groups of 40 young adults participated in each experiment. Effects of SNR were observed for all measures. Linear effects of SNR were generally observed even with word recognition accuracy factored out of the models. Among the objective measures, reliability was excellent, and repeated-measures correlations, though not between-subjects correlations, were nearly all significant. The objective measures assessed appear to be sensitive and reliable indices of listening effort that are non-redundant with speech intelligibility and have strong within-participants convergent validity. Results support use of these measures in future studies of listening effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In adults with dyslexia (DYS), the persistent influence of phonological deficits on spoken language processing has mainly been examined in either perceptual tasks or those tapping complex cognitive operations. Much less attention is devoted to spoken word recognition per se. Our study aimed to fill this gap. Adults with and without dyslexia (for both groups: N = 30, mean age = 21 years, 50% female, 100% white European) performed an auditory lexical decision task. Performance and ERP were recorded. Reaction times showed a lexicality effect in both groups although they differed in ERP responses to stimulus lexicality. Skilled readers showed the typical amplitude enhancement for pseudowords compared to words in a late phase of N400 (414-581msec) whereas DYS showed the opposite pattern in an earlier phase of N400 (246-413msec). Both groups showed a stronger negativity during pseudowords processing in the late post-lexical stage (582-800msec). ERP data showed subtle differences between the two populations during the lexical stage of word recognition despite their comparable behavioral outcomes. We hypothesized that a stronger reliance on intact semantic knowledge might contribute to the general enhanced and sustained ERP responses to words in DYS across different phases of lexical processing, although confirmation is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different linguistic factors can influence the recognition of spoken words in French. We are interested in the impact of the linguistic factor of phonological density, which refers to the number of phonological neighbours of words and which is related to the recognition process according to a principle of inhibition and lexical competition. By using a lexical decision task, where half of the words have a low phonological density, and the other half a high phonological density, we aim to measure the reaction times of a group of young French-speaking participants (18-35 years old). The results of the young French-speaking group did not show a phonological density effect, however, these results did show a lexicality effect, demonstrating that the word and pseudo-word recognition task worked well. Thus, from the error analyses, the involvement of another factor, word familiarity, was induced. The post-experimental survey on this new factor showed an imbalance between the high and low density groups. By removing the low familiarity items from the analysis, a significant phonological density effect was obtained at this time. It is essential to discuss the role of word familiarity on spoken word recognition; as well as the material development for spoken word recognition tasks.

Previous research demonstrates listeners dynamically adjust phonetic categories in line with lexical context. While listeners show flexibility in adapting speech categories, recalibration may be constrained when variability can be attributed externally. It has been hypothesized that when listeners attribute atypical speech input to a causal factor, phonetic recalibration is attenuated. The current study investigated this theory directly by examining the influence of face masks, an external factor that affects both visual and articulatory cues, on the magnitude of phonetic recalibration. Across four experiments, listeners completed a lexical decision exposure phase in which they heard an ambiguous sound in either /s/-biasing or /ʃ/-biasing lexical contexts, while simultaneously viewing a speaker with a mask off, mask on the chin, or mask over the mouth. Following exposure, all listeners completed an auditory phonetic categorization test along an /ʃ/–/s/ continuum. In Experiment 1 (when no face mask was present during exposure trials), Experiment 2 (when the face mask was on the chin), Experiment 3 (when the face mask was on the mouth during ambiguous items), and Experiment 4 (when the face mask was on the mouth during the entire exposure phase), listeners showed a robust and equivalent phonetic recalibration effect. Recalibration manifested as greater proportion /s/ responses for listeners in the /s/-biased exposure group, relative to listeners in the /ʃ/-biased exposure group. Results support the notion that listeners do not causally attribute face masks with speech idiosyncrasies, which may reflect a general speech learning adjustment during the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large literature on visual word recognition has examined the role of (apparent) morphological structure by comparing suffixed (such as treatment), pseudo-suffixed (pigment), and non-suffixed (dogma) words with respect to their embeddings (treat, pig, dog). We examined the processing of these word types, as well as semantic controls, in an auditory primed lexical decision paradigm. The results show significant priming in all conditions relative to an unrelated baseline, with larger priming effects for truly suffixed words than for pseudo-suffixed and non-suffixed words. The results suggest that initial embeddings are activated in spoken word processing, and remain active in ways that do not depend on (apparent) morphological structure. We discuss the implications of these findings for models of lexical access that predict inhibition of disfavoured competitors and models that hold that attempted decomposition is driven by meaning relatedness between the carrier word and its possible embedded stem(s). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an implementation of DIANA, a computational model of spoken word recognition, to model responses collected in the Massive Auditory Lexical Decision (MALD) project. DIANA is an end-to-end model, including an activation and decision component that takes the acoustic signal as input, activates internal word representations, and outputs lexicality judgments and estimated response latencies. Simulation 1 presents the process of creating acoustic models required by DIANA to analyze novel speech input. Simulation 2 investigates DIANA's performance in determining whether the input signal is a word present in the lexicon or a pseudoword. In Simulation 3, we generate estimates of response latency and correlate them with general tendencies in participant responses in MALD data. We find that DIANA performs fairly well in free word recognition and lexical decision. However, the current approach for estimating response latency provides estimates opposite to those found in behavioral data. We discuss these findings and offer suggestions as to what a contemporary model of spoken word recognition should be able to do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between the ways in which words are pronounced and spelled has been shown to affect spoken word processing, and a consistent relationship between pronunciation and spelling has been reported as a possible cause of unreduced pronunciations being easier to process than reduced counterparts although reduced pronunciations occur more frequently. In the present study, we investigate the effect of pronunciation-to-spelling consistency for reduced and unreduced pronunciations in L1 and L2 listeners of a logographic language. More precisely, we compare L1 and L2 Japanese listeners to probe whether they use orthographic information differently when processing reduced and unreduced speech. Using pupillometry, the current study provides evidence that extends the hypothesis about the role of orthography in the processing of reduced speech. Orthographic realization matters in processing for L1 and L2 advanced listeners. More specifically, how consistent the orthographic realization is with its phonological form (phonology-to-orthography consistency) modulates the extent to which reduced pronunciation induces additional processing costs. The results are further discussed in terms of their implications for how listeners process reduced speech and the role of the orthographic form in speech processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Speech mixed with noise and speech that is of an unfamiliar variety both make the task of understanding more difficult. Children are often more negatively affected by these situations than adults. Numerous studies have examined the cognitive and linguistic skills that support spoken language processing. In the current study, we examine the contribution of linguistic exposure and various cognitive and linguistic skills for spoken word recognition of an unfamiliar variety of speech (German-accented English). The Ease of Language Understanding model predicts that working memory skills are needed in the most difficult listening situations. Two groups of school-age children were drawn from a larger sample: those with exposure to multiple languages in the home and those exposed to only English in the home. As predicted, working memory skills predicted performance for children with less varied linguistic experience (those only exposed to English in the home), but not for children with varied linguistic exposure. In contrast, linguistic skills predicted performance for children with more varied linguistic experience, even though the two groups did not differ overall in any of the assessed skills. These findings support the Ease of Language Understanding model of language processing.

The Time-Invariant String Kernel (TISK) model of spoken word recognition (Hannagan, Magnuson & Grainger, 2013; You & Magnuson, 2018) is an interactive activation model with many similarities to TRACE (McClelland & Elman, 1986). However, by replacing most time-specific nodes in TRACE with time-invariant open-diphone nodes, TISK uses orders of magnitude fewer nodes and connections than TRACE. Although TISK performed remarkably similarly to TRACE in simulations reported by Hannagan et al., the original TISK implementation did not include lexical feedback, precluding simulation of top-down effects, and leaving open the possibility that adding feedback to TISK might fundamentally alter its performance. Here, we demonstrate that when lexical feedback is added to TISK, it gains the ability to simulate top-down effects without losing the ability to simulate the fundamental phenomena tested by Hannagan et al. Furthermore, with feedback, TISK demonstrates graceful degradation when noise is added to input, although parameters can be found that also promote (less) graceful degradation without feedback. We review arguments for and against feedback in cognitive architectures, and conclude that feedback provides a computationally efficient basis for robust constraint-based processing.

Lexical access is highly contextual. For example, vowel (rime) information is prioritized over tone in the lexical access of isolated words in Mandarin Chinese, but these roles are flipped in constraining contexts. The time course of these contextual effects remains unclear, and so here we tracked the real-time eye gaze of native Mandarin speakers in a visual-world paradigm. While listening to a noun classifier, before the target noun was even uttered, gaze to the target noun was already greater than looking to phonologically unrelated distractors. Critically, there was also more distraction from a cohort competitor (tone information) than a segmental competitor (vowel information) in more semantically constraining contexts. Results confirm that phonological activation in Mandarin lexical access is highly sensitive to context, with tone taking priority over vowel information even before a target word is heard. Results suggest that phonological activation in real-time lexical access may be highly context-specific across languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work by Baese-Berk and Samuel (Baese-Berk, M. M., & Samuel, A. G. (2022). Just give it time: Differential effects of disruption and delay on perceptual learning. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 84(3), 960–980.) suggests that immediate – but not delayed – production has a detrimental effect on learning a non-native speech sound contrast. We tested whether this pattern is also found for word learning. Each participant learned 12 new words in one of four training conditions: Perception-Only, Immediate-Production, 2-seconds-Delayed-Production, and 4-seconds-Delayed-Production. At test, we assessed how well new words were embedded into the mental lexicon by measuring the degree to which they could drive phonemic recalibration (also called "perceptual learning"). Training and testing were repeated on the next day along with a word recognition task assessing lexical configuration. Replicating previous findings, Day 1 results showed that repeating a new word immediately after hearing it disrupted learning compared to just hearing it. Critically, in line with our prediction, this negative effect disappeared when a 4-second pause was inserted between hearing and producing each word. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This exploratory study examined the simultaneous interactions and relative contributions of bottom-up social information (regional dialect, speaking style), top-down contextual information (semantic predictability), and the internal dynamics of the lexicon (neighborhood density, lexical frequency) to lexical access and word recognition. Cross-modal matching and intelligibility in noise tasks were conducted with a community sample of adults at a local science museum. Each task featured one condition in which keywords were presented in isolation and one condition in which they were presented within a multiword phrase. Lexical processing was slower and more accurate when keywords were presented in their phrasal context, and was both faster and more accurate for auditory stimuli produced in the local Midland dialect. In both tasks, interactions were observed among stimulus dialect, speaking style, semantic predictability, phonological neighborhood density, and lexical frequency. These interactions revealed that bottom-up social information and top-down contextual information contribute more to speech processing than the internal dynamics of the lexicon. Moreover, the relatively stronger bottom-up social effects were observed in both the isolated word and multiword phrase conditions, suggesting that social variation is central to speech processing, even in non-interactive laboratory tasks. At the same time, the specific interactions observed differed between the two experiments, reflecting task-specific demands related to processing time constraints and signal degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonwords created by transposing two phonemes of auditory words (e.g., /buʒãle/) are more effective primes for the corresponding base word target (/bulãʒe/) than nonword primes created by substituting two phonemes (e.g., /buvãʀe/). In one in-lab experiment and one online experiment using the short-term phonological priming paradigm, here, we examine the role of vowels and consonants in driving transposed-phoneme priming effects. Results showed that facilitatory transposed-phoneme priming occurs when the transposed phonemes are consonants (/buʒãle/–/bulãʒe/; /lubãʒe/-/bulãʒe/), but not when they are vowels (/bãluʒe/–/bulãʒe/; /buleʒã/–/bulãʒe/). These results add to existing findings showing differences in the processing of vowels and consonants during spoken and visual word recognition. We suggest that differences in the speed of processing of consonants and vowels combined with differences in the amount of information provided by consonants and vowels relative to the identity of the word being recognized provide a complete account of the present findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines degree of competition among phonologicallysimilar words? One proposal is that proportion of overlappredicts competition independently of word length. We arguethat proportion of overlap may provide descriptive adequacy,but does not provide an explanation. We show that TRACEcorrectly predicts patterns previously attributed to proportionof overlap. In additional simulations, with independentmanipulations of word length and proportion of overlap,proportion of overlap fails to predict the full pattern of results.We discuss how competition dynamics in TRACE modulatecompetition as word length and proportion of overlap change.These results have implications for theories of human spokenword recognition, and will motivate experiments to test thesenew TRACE predictions.

A computational model for the comprehension of single spoken words is presented that builds on an earlier model using discriminative learning. Real-valued features are extracted from the speech signal instead of discrete features. Vectors representing word meanings using one-hot encoding are replaced by real-valued semantic vectors. Instead of incremental learning with Rescorla-Wagner updating, we use linear discriminative learning, which captures incremental learning at the limit of experience. These new design features substantially improve prediction accuracy for unseen words, and provide enhanced temporal granularity, enabling the modelling of cohort-like effects. Visualisation with t-SNE shows that the acoustic form space captures phone-like properties. Trained on 9 h of audio from a broadcast news corpus, the model achieves recognition performance that approximates the lower bound of human accuracy in isolated word recognition tasks. LDL-AURIS thus provides a mathematically-simple yet powerful characterisation of the comprehension of single words as found in English spontaneous speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined whether Chinese spoken compound words are processed via full-form access or combination through morphemes by recording mismatch negativity (MMN). MMN has been shown to be larger for linguistic units that involves full-form access (lexical MMN enhancement) and smaller for separate but combinable units (combinatorial MMN reduction). Chinse compound words were compared against pseudocompounds, which do not have full-form representations in the long-term memory and are "illegal" combinations. All stimuli were disyllabic (bimorphemic). Word frequency was manipulated with the prediction that low-frequency compounds are more likely processed combinatorially, while high-frequency ones are more likely accessed in full forms. The results showed that low-frequency words elicited smaller MMNs than pseudocompounds, which supported the prediction of combinatorial processing. However, neither MMN enhancement nor reduction was found for high-frequency words. These results were interpreted within the dual-route model framework that assumes simultaneous access to words and morphemes. • The strength of MMN depends on whether the linguistic deviants are accessed in full forms or by combining the constituents. • Smaller MMN for low frequency Chinese compound words than pseudocompounds • No difference between high frequency Chinese compound words and pseudocompounds • Results are interpreted as supporting a dual-route model of compound word processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spoken language contains overlapping patterns across different levels, from syllables to words to phrases. The discovery of these structures may be partially supported by statistical learning (SL), the unguided, automatic extraction of regularities from the environment through passive exposure. SL supports word learning in artificial language experiments, but few studies have examined whether it scales up to support natural language learning in adult second language learners. Here, adult English speakers (n = 70) listened to daily podcasts in either Italian or English for 2 weeks while going about their normal routines. To measure word knowledge, participants provided familiarity ratings of Italian words and nonwords both before and after the listening period. Critically, compared with English controls, Italian listeners significantly improved in their ability to discriminate Italian words and nonwords. These results suggest that unguided exposure to natural, foreign language speech supports the extraction of relevant word features and the development of nascent word forms. At a theoretical level, these findings indicate that SL may effectively scale up to support real-world language acquisition. These results also have important practical implications, suggesting that adult learners may be able to acquire relevant speech patterns and initial word forms simply by listening to the language. This form of learning can occur without explicit effort, formal instruction or focused study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Two-talker babble compromised Mandarin word recognition in noise more than speech-shaped noise. • Non-native word recognition was not affected disproportionately by noise. • Both native listeners and non-native learners used lexical knowledge to overcome noise. • Only native listeners used their knowledge about the tonal sound pattern of words. Adverse listening conditions typically trigger the use of linguistic knowledge, which helps the listener compensate for the impoverished acoustic signal. It is not clear, however, whether linguistic knowledge facilitates non-native speech perception in the same way as it does native speech perception. This study examined how native listeners and non-native learners use distributional characteristics of the Mandarin lexicon for word recognition in noise. Monosyllabic Mandarin words varying in syllable token frequency and syllable-tone co-occurrence probabilities were mixed with speech-shaped noise and two-talker babble at two signal-to-noise ratios. Participants were asked to listen to the speech and type the perceived syllable and tone word. The results showed that two-talker babble was more disruptive than speech-shaped noise, and a lower signal-to-noise ratio was more detrimental than a higher signal-to-noise ratio. However, neither noise type or noise level affected non-native word recognition disproportionately. Syllable token frequency facilitated word recognition for both listener groups, but only the native listeners showed robust use of syllable-tone co-occurrence probabilities for word recognition. For all listeners, lexical proficiency correlated positively with word recognition performance. These results suggest that lexical proficiency accounts for the use of distributional knowledge regardless of the type or level of noise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spoken word recognition depends on variations in fine-grained phonetics as listeners decode speech. However, many models of second language (L2) speech perception focus on units such as isolated syllables, and not on words. In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigated how fine-grained phonetic details (i.e. duration of nasalization on contrastive and coarticulatory nasalized vowels in Canadian French) influenced spoken word recognition in an L2, as compared to a group of native (L1) listeners. Results from L2 listeners (English-native speakers) indicated that fine-grained phonetics impacted the recognition of words, i.e. they were able to use nasalization duration variability in a way similar to L1-French listeners, providing evidence that lexical representations can be highly specified in an L2. Specifically, L2 listeners were able to distinguish minimal word pairs (differentiated by the presence of phonological vowel nasalization in French) and were able to use variability in a way approximating L1-French listeners. Furthermore, the robustness of the French "nasal vowel" category in L2 listeners depended on age of exposure. Early bilinguals displayed greater sensitivity to some ambiguity in the stimuli than late bilinguals, suggesting that early bilinguals had greater sensitivity to small variations in the signal and thus better knowledge of the phonetic cue associated with phonological vowel nasalization in French, similarly to L1 listeners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do learners build up auditory pattern knowledge? Findings from children's spoken word learning suggest more robust auditory representations for highly familiar words than for newly learned words. This argues against spoken language learning as a process of simply acquiring a fixed set of speech sound categories, suggesting instead that specific words may be the relevant units. More generally, one might state this as the specific-learning hypothesis-that acquiring sound pattern knowledge involves learning specific patterns, rather than abstract pattern components. To understand the nature of human language knowledge, it is important to determine whether this specific learning reflects processes unique to spoken language learning or instead reflects more general auditory-learning processes. To investigate whether the specific-learning hypothesis extends to auditory pattern learning more generally, the present study tested the perceptual processing of familiar melodies versus carefully matched unfamiliar melodies. Children performed better at both audiovisual mapping (Exp. 1) and same-different auditory discrimination (Exp. 2) when hearing familiar melodies than when hearing unfamiliar melodies. This is consistent with the specific-learning hypothesis and with exemplar-style general-auditory accounts of pattern learning, although alternative explanations are possible.

Despite the lack of invariance problem (the many-to-manymapping between acoustics and percepts), we experiencephonetic constancy and typically perceive what a speakerintends. Models of human speech recognition have side-stepped this problem, working with abstract, idealized inputsand deferring the challenge of working with real speech. Incontrast, automatic speech recognition powered by deeplearning networks have allowed robust, real-world speechrecognition. However, the complexities of deep learningarchitectures and training regimens make it difficult to usethem to provide direct insights into mechanisms that maysupport human speech recognition. We developed a simplenetwork that borrows one element from automatic speechrecognition (long short-term memory nodes, which providedynamic memory for short and long spans). This allows thenetwork to learn to map real speech from multiple talkers tosemantic targets with high accuracy. Internal representationsemerge that resemble phonetically-organized responses inhuman superior temporal gyrus, suggesting that the modeldevelops a distributed phonological code despite no explicittraining on phonetic or phonemic targets. The ability to workwith real speech is a major advance for cognitive models ofhuman speech recognition.

Extensive research has explored the perception of English lexical stress by Chinese EFL learners and tried to unveil the underlying mechanism of the prosodic transfer from a native tonal language to a non-native stress language. However, the role of the pitch as the shared cue by lexical stress and lexical tone during the transfer remains controversial when the segmental cue (i.e., reduced vowel) is absent. By employing event-related potential (ERP) measurements, the current study aimed to further investigate the role of the pitch during the prosodic transfer from L1 lexical tone to L2 lexical stress and the underlying neural responses. Two groups of adult Chinese EFL learners were compared, as both Mandarin and Cantonese are tonal languages with different levels of complexity. The results showed that Cantonese speakers relied more than Mandarin speakers on pitch cues, not only in their processing of English lexical stress but also in word recognition. Our findings are consistent with the arguments of Cue Weighting and attest to the influence of native tonal language experience on second language acquisition. The results may have implications on pedagogical methods that pitch could be an important clue in second language teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language researchers in a variety of disciplines have used priming as a tool to investigate theoretical questions. In spoken word recognition, long-term repetition priming effects have been obtained across a number of behavioral tasks (e.g., lexical decision, shadowing). Repeated -- primed -- words are responded to more efficiently than new -- unprimed -- words. However, to our knowledge, long-term repetition priming effects have not been examined using computer mouse tracking, which would provide data regarding the time course of long-term repetition priming effects. Consequently, we compared participants' lexical decision responses using a computer mouse to primed and unprimed words. We predicted that participants would respond more efficiently to primed words compared to unprimed words. Indeed, across all of the dependent variables investigated (accuracy, reaction time, mouse trajectories) and across environments (in person, online), participants responded more efficiently to primed words than to unprimed words. We also performed additional exploratory analyses examining long-term repetition priming effects for nonwords. Across environments (in person, online), participants had more errors to primed nonwords than to unprimed nonwords, but there were no differences in reaction times and mouse trajectories. The current data demonstrating long-term repetition priming effects in mouse tracking are expected to motivate future investigations examining the time course of various long-term repetition priming effects for both words and nonwords. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the first results obtained with REVOC: 1, an automated auditory word recognition task used to assess receptive vocabulary in Spanish-speaking preschoolers. The task was programmed in Unity for 8' tablets in a self-application mode and included accuracy and response time as parameters. Non-probabilistic sampling was used. The sample consisted of 242 monolingual Chilean children between 4 and 6 years old. The list of vocabulary stimuli was extracted from TEVI-R, a paper-based test that assesses receptive (hearing) vocabulary. To estimate the automation's functionality and the parameters' values, the performance by age group at both global and item levels was evaluated. The results demonstrated a high level of performance in the selected items, with significant differences by age group in both accuracy and response time. The accuracy correlated negatively with total and correct latencies, with significant differences between age groups. The contrast by items allowed us to appreciate the time-precision relationship modulated by age, and the effect of word difficulty on latency. REVOC:1 adequately assessed receptive vocabulary and can advance to new stages of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on spoken word production have shown that native English speakers used phonemesized units (e.g., a word-initial phoneme, C) to produce English words, and native Mandarin Chinese speakers employed syllable-sized units (e.g., a word-initial consonant and vowel, CV) as phonological encoding units in Chinese. With spoken word production, although spoken word recognition is a fundamental language skill of human beings, it is unknown whether a Chinese-English bilingual listener can adjust the phonological unit sizes depending on the language used. Using four mouse-tracking spoken word recognition experiments, participants listened to spoken words (either presented in English or Chinese) while viewing a display of two written words. In Experiment 1, Chinese-English bilinguals experienced a larger phonological competition in the CV condition than the control condition, indicating that they recruited syllables when listening to Chinese monosyllabic words. Experiment 2 extended the results of Experiment 1 with a set of Chinese disyllabic words and further revealed the temporal distribution of syllable overlap of a spoken word constrains phonological competition. In Experiment 3, Chinese-English bilinguals exhibited a greater phonological competition in both CV and C conditions that mirrored those reported with English monolinguals in Experiment 4. Our results across experiments demonstrated that Chinese-English bilinguals employed both phonemes and syllables to recognize English spoken words but exclusively relied on syllables to recognize Chinese words, suggesting that there is flexibility in selecting phonological units when recognizing spoken words in the two languages. Implications for models of monolingual and bilingual spoken recognition are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient word recognition depends on the ability to overcome competition from overlapping words. The nature of the overlap depends on the input modality: spoken words have temporal overlap from other words that share phonemes in the same positions, whereas written words have spatial overlap from other words with letters in the same places. It is unclear how these differences in input format affect the ability to recognise a word and the types of competitors that become active while doing so. This study investigates word recognition in both modalities in children between 7 and 15. Children complete a visual-world paradigm eye-tracking task that measures competition from words with several types of overlap, using identical word lists between modalities. Results showed correlated developmental changes in the speed of target recognition in both modalities. In addition, developmental changes were seen in the efficiency of competitor suppression for some competitor types in the spoken modality. These data reveal some developmental continuity in the process of word recognition independent of modality but also some instances of independence in how competitors are activated. Stimuli, data, and analyses from this project are available at: https://osf.io/eav72. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a spoken word unfolds over time, similar sounding words (cap and cat) compete until one word "wins". Lexical competition becomes more efficient from infancy through adolescence. We examined one potential mechanism underlying this development: lexical inhibition, by which activated candidates suppress competitors. In Experiment 1, younger (7–8 years) and older (12–13 years) children heard words (cap) in which the onset was manipulated to briefly boost competition from a cohort competitor (cat). This was compared to a condition with a nonword (cack) onset that would not inhibit the target. Words were presented in a visual world task during which eye movements were recorded. Both groups showed less looking to the target when perceiving the competitor-splice relative to the nonword-splice, showing engagement of lexical inhibition. Exploratory analyses of linguistic adaptation across the experiment revealed that older children demonstrated consistent lexical inhibition across the experiment and younger children did not, initially showing no effect in the first half of trials and then a robust effect in the latter half. In Experiment 2, adults also displayed consistent lexical inhibition in the same task. These findings suggest that younger children do not consistently engage lexical inhibition in typical listening but can quickly bring it online in response to certain linguistic experiences. Computational modeling showed that age-related differences are best explained by increased engagement of inhibition rather than growth in activation. These findings suggest that continued development of lexical inhibition in later childhood may underlie increases in efficiency of spoken word recognition. Public Significance Statement: This study suggests that inhibition between words during spoken word recognition shows development across the school years, with younger children showing less reliable engagement of lexical inhibition while older children and adults show consistent engagement. Thus, development of lexical inhibition may help to explain the increases in efficiency of spoken word recognition that continue through adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Data augmentation techniques have been useful in dealing with limited data for machine learning tasks. Recently, spectrogram data augmentation techniques have been investigated for voice conversion and sound classification tasks and have produced better results. However, applying multiple data augmentation techniques within a mini-batch has been observed to lead to performance degradation. While applying multiple augmentation methods sequentially has shown performance gains in image data, transferring this approach to spectrogram data leads to loss of acoustic information. Hence, an alternative approach is needed to effectively utilize multiple augmentation methods in the speech domain. This study addressed these challenges in low-resource settings for spoken word recognition within the mini-batch. First, we investigated the effect of data augmentation techniques. Second, we investigated the effect of multiple data augmentation techniques. Finally, we proposed a new approach that uses an alternate mechanism to utilize multiple spectrogram augmentation techniques more effectively. The results of our experiment show that the proposed approach (new pattern) outperforms the sequential approach (traditional pattern) significantly at different scales of datasets, including low-resource settings. In addition, the proposed approach achieves approximately 2x actual speedup over the sequential approach. A combination of frequency-warping and time length control augmentation methods was found to be stable and robust in performance across all datasets evaluated. • Exploration of mini-batch augmentation methods for spoken word recognition. • Optimal pattern design for utilizing multiple augmentation methods is investigated. • Alternating augmentation methods within mini-batch forms a new optimal pattern. • A new pattern outperforms the traditional pattern even in low resource settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variation in the pronunciation of spoken words constitutes one of the primary challenges to theories of Spoken Word Recognition (SWR). In this paper we examine the processing and representation of a type of variation that is connected to morphology: variation in ING, which is found in words that vary between an -ing and an -in' form. This variation, which is found in monomorphemes like awning in addition to affixed words, has been extensively studied, and has well-known social effects. Crucially, there is no consensus in the field as to whether the variation is morphological – involving distinct -ing and -in' morphemes – or phonological in nature, with -in' produced from an underlying -ing form. We connect the morphological and phonological analyses from the sociolinguistic literature to what have been called dual representation and unique representation in the SWR literature. We report the results of a series of experiments that use an auditory priming paradigm to explore the competing predictions of the dual and unique representation approaches. Priming provides insight into what types of representations are shared between the variants, which in turn informs the theoretical opposition at the center of the discussion about the locus of ING's variation. The first of these experiments reveals priming both within and across ING variants, with significantly more priming found when both variants are -in'. Follow-up experiments manipulating the distance between prime and target, as well as introducing monomorphemes like awning , provide evidence that we interpret as favoring the unique representation view, with the -ing/-in' alternation being phonological in nature. Alternative explanations are explored as well, with an eye towards the directions that future work on variation might take. • Experimental look at processing and representation of ING variation in complex words. • Findings favor a unique lexical representation model over a dual representation model. • Evidence suggests that the English ING alternation is phonological in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In typical adults, recognizing both spoken and written words is thought to be served by a process of competition between candidates in the lexicon. In recent years, work has used eye-tracking in the visual world paradigm to characterize this competition process over development. It has shown that both spoken and written word recognition continue to develop through adolescence (Rigler et al., 2015). It is still unclear what drives these changes in real-time word recognition over the school years, as there are dramatic changes in language, the onset of reading instruction, and gains in domain general function during this time. This study began to address these issues by asking whether changes in real-time word recognition derive from changes in overall language and reading ability or reflect more general age-related development. This cross-sectional study examined 278 school-age children (Grades 1–3) using the Visual World Paradigm to assess both spoken and written word recognition, along with multiple measures of language, reading and phonology. A structural equation model applied to these ability measures found three factors representing language, reading, and phonology. Multiple regression analyses were used to understand how these three factors relate to real-time spoken and written word recognition as well as a non-linguistic variant of the VWP intended to capture decision speed, eye-movement factors, and other non-language/reading differences. We found that for both spoken and written word recognition, the speed of activating target words in both domains was more closely tied to the relevant ability (e.g., reading for written word recognition) than was age. We also examined competition resolution (how fully competitors were suppressed late in processing). Here, spoken word recognition showed only small, developmental effects that were only related to phonological processing, suggesting links to developmental language disorder. However, in written word recognition, competitor resolution showed large impacts of development which were strongly linked to reading. This suggests the dimensionality of real-time lexical processing may differ across domains. Importantly, neither spoken nor written word recognition is fully described by changes in non-linguistic skills assessed with non-linguistic VWP, and the non-linguistic VWP was linked to differences in language and reading. These findings suggest that spoken and written word recognition continue past the first year of life and are mostly driven by ability and not only by overall maturation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]