title: Feature migration in time: reflection of selective attention on speech errors.
abstract: This article describes an initial study of the effect of focused attention on phonological speech errors. In 3 experiments, participants recited 4-word tongue twisters and focused attention on 1 (or none) of the words. The attended word was singled out differently in each experiment; participants were under instructions to avoid errors on the attended word, to stress it, or to say it silently. The experiments showed that all methods of attending to a word decreased errors on that word, while increasing errors on the surrounding words. However, this error increase did not result from a relative increase in phonemic migrations originating from the attended word. This pattern is inconsistent with conceptualizing attention either as a higher activation of the attended word or greater inhibition of the unattended words throughout the production of the sequence. Instead, it is consistent with a model that presumes that attention exerts its effect at the time of production of the attended word, without lingering effects on the past or the future.
authors.affiliation: Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, and Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA. nozari@sas.upenn.edu
authors.forename: Nazbanou
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Nozari
authors.forename: Gary S
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Dell
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D010700:Phonetics; D013060:Speech; D013068:Speech Production Measurement