Integrality and trading relations across syllabic and lexical boundaries
Gail R. Torniak, James R. Sawusch · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1988
Previous research using a speeded classification task with noise-tone analogs of monosyllables and disyllables has shown that monosyllabic stimuli show integral processing of adjacent phones when perceived as speech, but separable processing of adjacent pitch and amplitude information when heard as nonspeech. Furthermore, this integrality effect was found to be more pronounced within syllables than across syllable boundaries. It was suggested that this pattern of results reflects a speech mode of processing. The purpose of the present experiment was to determine whether trading relations can also be attributed to language specific coding processes or, to the auditory integration of information spanning syllable (and lexical) boundaries. Analogs of speech stimuli known to produce a trading relation [Repp et al., J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform. 4, 621–637 (1978)] were constructed and tested in a speeded classification task. The results, and implications of these findings, will be discussed. [Work supported by NINCDS.]