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Abstract
Background/Aims: Lexically guided perceptual learning in speech is the updating of linguistic categories based on novel input disambiguated by the structure provided in a recognized lexical item. We test the range of variation that allows for perceptual learning by presenting listeners with items that vary from subtle within-category variation to fully remapped cross-category variation. Methods: Experiment 1 uses a lexically guided perceptual learning paradigm with words containing noncanonical /s/ realizations from s/ʃ continua that correspond to “typical,” “ambiguous,” “atypical,” and “remapped” steps. Perceptual learning is tested in an s/ʃ categorization task. Experiment 2 addresses listener sensitivity to variation in the exposure items using AX discrimination tasks. Results: Listeners in experiment 1 showed perceptual learning with the maximally ambiguous tokens. Performance of listeners in experiment 2 suggests that tokens which showed the most perceptual learning were not perceptually salient on their own. Conclusion: These results demonstrate that perceptual learning is enhanced with maximally ambiguous stimuli. Excessively atypical pronunciations show attenuated perceptual learning, while typical pronunciations show no evidence for perceptual learning. AX discrimination illustrates that the maximally ambiguous stimuli are not perceptually unique. Together, these results suggest that perceptual learning relies on an interplay between confidence in phonetic and lexical predictions and category typicality.
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References
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- 1
Formula used: accuracy – exposure item type × category typicality + (1 + exposure item type | subject) + (1 + category typicality | word).
- 2
Formula used: accuracy – step × category typicality+ (1 + step | subject) + (1 + step × category typicality | item).
- 3
A reviewer points out that many of these excised CV sequences themselves create words (e.g., /si/ and /ʃi/ excised from the canonical and remapped end points of galaxy create the words see and she). Including fricative-rhotic sequences, which create words like sure and sir, 9 of the 20 CV sequences mapped to real CV words. Being excised out of word-medial positions from multisyllabic words, these items retain any coarticulation from the surrounding context and are considerably shorter in duration (mean: 275 ms, SD: 54 ms) than the real word equivalents of these words (for example, test items sigh and shy were 635 and 622 ms, respectively). This fact and the monotony of the experiment make it less likely that listeners processed these items as fully word-like (Cutler et al., 1987).
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