Effect of speech fragments on the perception of a phonetically ambiguous word
Dan J. Swift, John E. Limber · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1976
An ambiguous word (s*ore) interpretable as store or score was created by excising all remnants of the [t] from store and replacing it by 150 msec of silence. Parameters controlling the perception of this form were systematically investigated as follows. [t]-fragments or [k]-fragments excised from store or score were presented concurrently (or delayed 100 msec) with the silent interval of s*ore. Two fragment durations, 80 and 150 msec, were used. All fragments were presented dichotically and monotically. S*ore itself and s*ore with a 150-msec tone served as controls. Subjects pressed a button when they perceived a designated target word, store or score, within a list including controls and fillers. Stimuli were prepared using the PDP-9 computer facility at MIT. Across all conditions fragments controlled the perception of s*ore in the appropriate direction over controls (p < 0.0001). The strongest effects were in the simultaneous and monotic conditions, but dichotic and delay conditions were significant (p < 0.001). Implications of these results for explanations in terms of acoustic adding, high-level blending, and biasing are considered.