Time course of spoken word recognition

目前的拨款建议的总体目标是表征的过程中，听众认识到在流利的讲话的话。 拟议中的研究探讨的竞争对手集，激活在单词识别contnuous语音的性质，专注于词汇的邻居，子音素声学/语音变化和嵌入式词汇竞争对手。 一个关于知觉学习的新研究计划也将启动。 当参与者按照口头指示拾取和移动（用鼠标）计算机显示器上的具体对象的线条图时，将监测眼球运动（例如，“把糖捡起来。 现在把它放在圆圈上面。 这些研究将提供最细粒度的信息，迄今为止的词汇激活的时间过程中连续的讲话。 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，可以随着时间的推移为词汇候选者生成预测的激活。 该研究将有助于弥补口语词识别研究与言语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。 这些结果对于口语单词识别模型将是重要的，并且还将告知模型神经损伤对口语单词识别的影响以及儿童词汇发展模型。 此外，由于眼动范式不依赖于这些人群难以进行的元语言判断，因此可以很容易地扩展到脑损伤患者，幼儿和婴儿的实证研究。

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.