title: Evidence for precategorical extrinsic vowel normalization.
abstract: Three experiments investigated whether extrinsic vowel normalization takes place largely at a categorical or a precategorical level of processing. Traditional vowel normalization effects in categorization were replicated in Experiment 1: Vowels taken from an [I]-[ε] continuum were more often interpreted as /I/ (which has a low first formant, F(1)) when the vowels were heard in contexts that had a raised F(1) than when the contexts had a lowered F(1). This was established with contexts that consisted of only two syllables. These short contexts were necessary for Experiment 2, a discrimination task that encouraged listeners to focus on the perceptual properties of vowels at a precategorical level. Vowel normalization was again found: Ambiguous vowels were more easily discriminated from an endpoint [ε] than from an endpoint [I] in a high-F(1) context, whereas the opposite was true in a low-F(1) context. Experiment 3 measured discriminability between pairs of steps along the [I]-[ε] continuum. Contextual influences were again found, but without discrimination peaks, contrary to what was predicted from the same participants' categorization behavior. Extrinsic vowel normalization therefore appears to be a process that takes place at least in part at a precategorical processing level.
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525 XD Nijmegen, The Netherlands. matthias.sjerps@mpi.nl
authors.forename: Matthias J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Sjerps
authors.forename: James M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: McQueen
authors.forename: Holger
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Mitterer
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D010700:Phonetics; D013060:Speech / Q000145:classification*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*