Sentential context reduces lexical competition effort, but degraded speech delays that reduction

Evidence

The curves for NS and DS in the neutral condition show a constant increase in pupil size over time as a function of lexical competition. The curves for the context condition show a decline in pupil size growth starting at around 800 ms after the onset of the target word. The statistical analysis revealed significant three way interactions with Context (N versus C) and Presentation (NS versus DS) on all terms describing the curves: Intercept (χ 2 (3) = 301.90, p < 0.001), slope (χ 2 (3) = 145.3, p < 0.001), and the cubic term, the curvature around the peak (χ 2 (3) = 272.52, p < 0.001). This implies that pupil dilation was sensitive in capturing the reduced effect of lexical competition in the context sentences versus neutral context, but this effect was delayed and smaller in DS than in NS. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3993