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Article published In: The Mental Lexicon
Vol. 15:2 (2020) ► pp.189–222

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Differences in perception and memory for speech fragments in complex versus simple words

Two experiments

 | University of Wisconsin
Published online: 6 November 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.19004.pyc
Abstract
Two experiments investigated how people perceived and remembered fragments of spoken words that either corresponded to correct lexical entries (as in the complex word drink-er) or did not (as in the simple word glitt-er). Experiment 1 was a noise-rating task that probed perception. Participants heard stimuli such drinker, where strikethrough indicates noise overlaid at a controlled signal-to-noise ratio, and rated the loudness of the noise. Results showed that participants rated noise on certain pseudo-roots (e.g., glitter) as louder than noise on true roots (drinker), indicating that they perceived them with less clarity. Experiment 2 was an eye-fixation task that probed memory. Participants heard a word such as drink-er while associating each fragment with a visual shape. At test, they saw the shapes again, and were asked to look at the shape associated with a particular fragment, such as drink. Results showed that fixations to shapes associated with pseudo-affixes (-er in glitter) were less accurate than fixations to shapes associated with true affixes (-er in drinker), which suggests that they remembered the pseudo-affixes more poorly. These findings provide evidence that the presence of correct lexical entries for roots and affixes modulates people’s judgments about the speech that they hear.
Article outline
  • Background and motivation
  • Experiment 1 on perception: Noise-rating task
    • Method
      • Overview of stimulus selection
      • Stimulus selection process
      • Fillers
      • Recording and segmentation
      • Normalization and stimulus creation
      • List construction
      • Procedure
    • Participants
    • Results
      • Preliminary break-down by noise level
      • Main analysis
    • Summary of Experiment 1
  • Experiment 2 on memory: Fixation task
    • Method
      • Stimuli
      • Procedure
      • Participants
    • Results
    • Discussion of Experiment 2
  • Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
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