Time course of spoken word recognition

本拨款提案的总体目标是描述听者在流利讲话中识别单词的过程。本研究探讨了在连续语音单词识别过程中激活的竞争对手集的性质，重点关注词汇邻域、次音位声学/语音变化和嵌入式词汇竞争对手。一个关于感知学习的新研究项目也将启动。当参与者按照口头指示（用鼠标）在电脑显示器上拿起并移动具体物体的线条图时（例如，“拿起糖果”），将监测他们的眼球运动。现在把它放在圆圈的上方。”这些研究将提供迄今为止关于连续言语中词汇激活的时间过程的最精细的信息。显式链接假设的可用性意味着这些数据可以用于比较和对比模型，这些模型足够显式，可以为词汇候选词生成随时间的预测激活。本研究将有助于弥合语音识别研究与语音感知研究之间的差距，并为感知学习对词汇加工的影响提供重要的新信息。这一结果将对口语识别模型具有重要意义，也将为神经损伤对口语识别的影响模型和儿童词汇发展模型提供信息。此外，由于眼动范式不依赖于对这些人群来说很困难的元语言判断，它可以很容易地扩展到对脑损伤患者、幼儿和婴儿的实证研究中。

The overall goal of the present grant proposal is to characterize the process by which listeners recognize words in fluent speech. The proposed research examines the nature of the competitor set that is activated during word recognition in contnuous speech, focusing on lexical neighborhoods, sub-phonemic acoustic/phonetic variation and embedded lexical competitors. A novel program of research on perceptual learning will also be initiated. Eye movements will be monitored as participants follow spoken instructions to pick up and move (with a mouse) line drawings of concrete objects on a computer monitor (e.g., "pick up the candy. now put it above the circle".) These studies will provide the finest grained information to date about the time course of lexical activation in continuous speech. The availability of an explicit linking hypothesis means that these data can be used to compare and contrast models that are explicit enough to generate predicted activations over time for lexical candidates. The proposed research will help bridge the gap between research on spoken word recognition research and research on speech perception and it will provide important new information about the effects of perceptual learning on lexical processing. The results will be important for models of spoken word recognition, and will also inform models of the effects of neurological damage on spoken word recognition and models of lexical development in children. Moreover, because the eye movement paradigm does not rely on meta-linguistic judgments that are difficult for these populations, it can be easily extended to empirical investigations of brain-damaged patients, young children, and infants.