Rapid Influence of Word-Talker Associations on Lexical Access

Abstract

Previous work on English and Korean demonstrates that words are more quickly identified as real words when they are produced by a voice congruent with the age of the talkers who are most likely to use the word (Kim, 2016, Laboratory Phonology, 7, 18; Walker & Hay, 2011, Laboratory Phonology, 2, 219-237). However, this previous work presents stimuli blocked by voice, giving the participant ample time to form expectations about the talker and the words that the talker would likely use. To test whether the effect can be observed in the absence of cues to talker age prior to word onset, the current experiment replicates Kim (2016, Laboratory Phonology, 7, 18) but without blocking by talker. Results from the current experiment confirm earlier findings and they demonstrate that the effect can be observed even without the listener having any expectations about the talker prior to hearing the word. We discuss the implications of these results for models of speech perception, suggesting that lexical access is rapidly boosted by socio-indexical phonetic cues that are congruent with socio-indexical lexical information.Kim & Drager (2018) provide new evidence confirming that socially-indexed phonetic cues affect lexical access. They show that young listeners are faster and more accurate when responding to words associated with young people and spoken by younger talkers, compared with old-associated words and older talkers. The effect of phonetic detail on lexical access is rapid and obtains even when the listener holds no expectations about the talker's age prior to the onset of the word.