Identifying the *eel on the Table: An Examination of Processes that Aid Spoken Word Ambiguity Resolution
Christine M. Szostak · OhioLink ETD Center (Ohio Library and Information Network) · 2009
Because ambiguous words frequently occur in running speech, the perceptual system must somehow resolve the ambiguities.If disambiguating context is present, it can aid resolution.When the disambiguation follows the ambiguity, the perceptual system delays resolution.Four Experiments investigated this delay.In Experiment 1, participants heard sentences containing a target word with a phoneme replaced by or intermixed with noise followed by disambiguating context close to or far from the target word (e.g., "The *ing had feathers."or "The *ing had an exquisite set of feathers.").In Experiments 2a and 2b duration between target word offset and disambiguation varied while syllable number remained constant.In Experiment 3 syllable number within this region varied while duration remained constant.Increasing syllable number caused early commitment.When the duration was also increased, early commitment was not observed.The findings suggest that sufficient processing time is necessary for the perceptual system to delay ambiguity resolution.