Perceptual retuning or perceptual bias? Investigating lexically guided learning across a phoneme boundary

Mona M. Faris, Michael D. Tyler

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference proceeding contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Lexically guided perceptual learning studies have shown that speakers use their knowledge of phonemes in words to retune existing phonemic categories in response to different pronunciations. In a previous study, the authors tested whether lexically guided retuning could occur across a native category boundary, that is, when words were pronounced with an incorrect native phoneme. Monolingual Australian-English listeners completed a training phase followed by a visual lexical decision task with cross-modal priming. For participants who were trained to perceive /θ/ as /f/, /θ/-bearing auditory stimuli subsequently primed visual f-targets but not stargets, consistent with training, but those in the /θ/=/s/ training group also showed a tendency for priming in the same
direction. Here we tested whether priming would occur for the same cross-modal priming task in the absence of training. Results demonstrated a similar priming effect to that of the previous study, suggesting that the priming effects were due to a pre-existing bias to perceive /θ/ as /f/. Taken together, the two studies suggest that lexically guided retuning may not be possible across a native phoneme boundary.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 14th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology
Pages169-172
Number of pages4
Publication statusPublished - 2012
Externally publishedYes
EventAustralasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (14th : 2012) - Sydney
Duration: 3 Dec 20126 Dec 2012

Conference

ConferenceAustralasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (14th : 2012)
CitySydney
Period3/12/126/12/12

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