title: Are there interactive processes in speech perception?
abstract: Lexical information facilitates speech perception, especially when sounds are ambiguous or degraded. The interactive approach to understanding this effect posits that this facilitation is accomplished through bi-directional flow of information, allowing lexical knowledge to influence pre-lexical processes. Alternative autonomous theories posit feed-forward processing with lexical influence restricted to post-perceptual decision processes. We review evidence supporting the prediction of interactive models that lexical influences can affect pre-lexical mechanisms, triggering compensation, adaptation and retuning of phonological processes generally taken to be pre-lexical. We argue that these and other findings point to interactive processing as a fundamental principle for perception of speech and other modalities.
authors.affiliation: Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition and Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. jlm@cnbc.cmu.edu
authors.forename: James L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: McClelland
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Mirman
authors.forename: Lori L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Holt
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013068:Speech Production Measurement