title: Eye movements reveal fast, voice-specific priming.
abstract: In spoken word perception, voice specificity effects are well-documented: When people hear repeated words in some task, performance is generally better when repeated items are presented in their originally heard voices, relative to changed voices. A key theoretical question about voice specificity effects concerns their time-course: Some studies suggest that episodic traces exert their influence late in lexical processing (the time-course hypothesis; McLennan & Luce, 2005), whereas others suggest that episodic traces influence immediate, online processing. We report 2 eye-tracking studies investigating the time-course of voice-specific priming within and across cognitive tasks. In Experiment 1, participants performed modified lexical decision or semantic classification to words spoken by 4 speakers. The tasks required participants to click a red "x" or a blue "+" located randomly within separate visual half-fields, necessitating trial-by-trial visual search with consistent half-field response mapping. After a break, participants completed a second block with new and repeated items, half spoken in changed voices. Voice effects were robust very early, appearing in saccade initiation times. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern while changing tasks across blocks, ruling out a response priming account. In the General Discussion, we address the time-course hypothesis, focusing on the challenge it presents for empirical disconfirmation, and highlighting the broad importance of indexical effects, beyond studies of priming.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University.
authors.forename: Megan H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Papesh
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Arizona State University.
authors.forename: Stephen D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Goldinger
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, New Mexico State University.
authors.forename: Michael C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Hout
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D060865:Repetition Priming / Q000502:physiology*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology; D014831:Voice / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult