The growth of lexical constraints on spoken word recognition.
In this study, we examined the influence of various sources of constraint on spoken word recognition in a mispronunciation-detection task. Five- and 8-year-olds and adults were presented with words (intact or with word-initial or noninitial errors) from three different age-of-acquisition categories. "Intact" and "mispronounced" responses were collected for isolated words with or without a picture referent (Experiment 1) and for words in constraining or unconstraining sentences (Experiment 2). Some evidence for differential attention to word-initial as opposed to noninitial acoustic-phonetic information (and thus the influence of sequential lexical constraints on recognition) was apparent in young children's and adults' response criteria and in older children's and adults' reaction times. A more marked finding, however, was the variation in subjects' performance, according to several measures, with age and lexical familiarity (defined according to adults' subjective age-of-acquisition estimates). Children's strategies for responding to familiar and unfamiliar words in different contexts are discussed.
Walley
A C
AC
Department of Psychology, University of Alabama, Birmingham 35294.
Metsala
J L
JL
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception