title: A phonetic explanation of pronunciation variant effects.
abstract: Effects of word-level phonetic variation on the recognition of words with different pronunciation variants (e.g., center produced with/(out) [t]) are investigated via the semantic- and pseudoword-priming paradigms. A bias favoring clearly articulated words with canonical variants ([nt]) is found. By reducing the bias, words with different variants show robust and equivalent lexical activation. The equivalence of different word forms highlights a snag for frequency-based theories of lexical access: How are words and word productions with vastly different frequencies recognized equally well by listeners? A process-based account is proposed, suggesting that careful speech induces bottom-up processing and casual speech induces top-down processing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Margaret Jacks Hall, Building 460, Stanford, California 94305-2150, USA. sumner@stanford.edu
authors.forename: Meghan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sumner
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012660:Semantics; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception