2007/01/03

Hay, J., Warren, P. & Grager K. (2006). Factors influencing speech perception in the context of a merger-in-progress. Journal of Phonetics, 34, 458–484.

Presentation: Renee
Summary: Sally

This study investigated a merger-in-progress of two vowels in words such as NEAR and SQUARE. Researchers manipulated the gender of the speakers and the visual presentation of the stimuli. For visual presentations, five conditions with the same people in different attires were presented in photos—one looked older, and the other looked younger; one as a middle-class, and the other as a working-class; the last condition was without photos. The five conditions paired with each stimulus. As for the procedure, participants first attended an identification test, followed by a reading task (recorded). Results showed that error rates were the highest for words which tend to be mostly merged in the participants’ experience, i.e. SQUARE, which supports the exemplar approach. In addition, participants performed significantly better when a photo was presented, which indicates that individuals are sensitive to social information in speech perception, and exemplars are indexed with social information. Finally, those who made the distinction themselves were more likely to have distinct exemplar sets, thus were able to perform the task more successfully.