Speech perception resolves word candidate competition before a decision is made

Evidence

For the fixations to the phonological competitor, as significant emerged the three way interactions with the first term (the intercept) of the curve (χ 2(18) = 28476, p < 0.001, the interaction with the quadratic term (the slope), (χ 2(18) = 28184, p < 0.001), the interaction between the cubic term (rise and fall around the central inflection), (χ 2(18) = 27632, p < 0.001), and the quartic term (curvature in the tails), (χ 2(18) = 27651, p < 0.05). The interaction with the intercept shows that the context sentences reduced the area under the fixation curves to the competitor for NS (red lines in Fig. 1a versus b ), and that this reduction was smaller for DS (red lines in Fig. 1c versus d ). The interaction with the slope shows that the growth of fixations to the competitor is shallower for DS in the neutral context than it is for NS in neutral context. The interaction with the cubic term reflects that the location of the peak of fixations towards the competitor in DS is delayed for about 300 ms relative to the location of the peak for NS, and that the course of this curve is more symmetric than for NS, and this mainly for the items presented in neutral context. The interaction with the quartic term reflects a slower decline of fixations towards the competitor in DS versus NS, and shallower for items in context than in neutral sentences. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3985 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Degraded speech delays lexical competition toward phonological competitors by about 300 ms — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3985; Speech perception requires both detection and discrimination of sound components; Linguistic context lets listeners understand speech at lower acoustic intelligibility (+1 more)

Related

• Degraded speech delays lexical competition toward phonological competitors by about 300 ms (similarity 0.91)
• Degraded speech delays peak competitor fixations by roughly 300 milliseconds (similarity 0.86)
• Sentential context reduces lexical competition effort, but degraded speech delays that reduction (similarity 0.86)
• Semantic context boosts competitor fixations in natural speech but not degraded speech (similarity 0.83)
• Gaze fixations to phonological competitors can expose how context shapes lexical competition. (similarity 0.83)
• Speech perception subconsciously activates overlapping word candidates that compete (similarity 0.82)
• Listeners subconsciously activate multiple word candidates before resolving lexical decisions (similarity 0.81)
• Degraded speech delays semantic integration and blocks contextual relief of effort (similarity 0.81)
• Delayed disambiguation under degradation accumulates working-memory load across running speech. (similarity 0.80)
• Semantic knowledge helps listeners interpret degraded speech signals (similarity 0.79)
• Linguistic context lets listeners understand speech at lower acoustic intelligibility (similarity 0.79)
• Semantic context changes fixations to semantic distractors only in natural speech (similarity 0.79)
• Word recognition involves subconsciously weighing several overlapping word candidates before deciding. (similarity 0.79)
• Semantic context boosts looks to distractor pictures only in clear speech (similarity 0.79)
• Degraded speech raises baseline listening effort independent of lexical competition effects (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Degraded speech delays lexical competition toward phonological competitors by about 300 ms #qualifies (0.85) — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3985
• Linguistic context lets listeners understand speech at lower acoustic intelligibility #corroborates (0.78)
• Speech perception requires both detection and discrimination of sound components #expands (0.75)