Only the shadower knows: comment on Hamburger and Slowiaczek (1996).
The phonological priming effect may reflect basic processes in spoken word perception and has thus been a central topic of recent research. In this journal, Hamburger and Slowiaczek (1996) reported phonological priming data collected in a shadowing task. They replicated a prior study (Slowiaczek & Hamburger, 1992), but added new procedures to minimize bias. After observing inhibitory priming in a "low-expectancy" condition, they concluded that facilitatory priming reflects perceptual/response bias, but that inhibitory priming reflects automatic processes of lexical access. This commentary critiques Hamburger and Slowiaczek's method and presents new data that demonstrate persistent biases in primed shadowing. I suggest that such biases reflect natural, context-sensitive listening strategies.
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe 85287-1104, USA. goldinger@asu.edu
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D006801:Humans; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time; D013067:Speech Perception