Evoking biphone neighborhoods with verbal transformations: illusory changes demonstrate both lexical competition and inhibition.
When a recorded verbal stimulus repeats over and over, perceptual changes occur and listeners hear competing forms. These verbal transformations (VTs) were obtained for a phonemically related set of 24 consonant-vowel syllables that varied widely in frequency-weighted neighborhood density (FWND). Listener's initial transformations involving substitution of consonants versus vowels were strongly correlated with the lexical substitution neighborhood [r=+0.82, p<0.0001]. Interestingly, as stimulus FWND increased, average time spent hearing illusory forms substantially decreased [r=-0.75, p<0.0001]. These results suggest that VTs not only reveal underlying competitors, but also provide a highly sensitive measure of lexical inhibition.
Bashford
James A
JA
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, PO Box 413, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201-0413, USA. bashford@uwm.edu
Warren
Richard M
RM
Lenz
Peter W
PW
D006801:Humans; D007088:Illusions; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D010700:Phonetics; D013067:Speech Perception; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014825:Vocabulary