The Dynamics of Lexical Competition During Spoken Word Recognition
Cognitive Science, 31 (1):
133--156 (2007)DOI: 10.1080/03640210709336987
Abstract
The sounds that make up spoken words are heard in a series and must
be mapped rapidly onto words in memory because their elements, unlike
those of visual words, cannot simultaneously exist or persist in
time. Although theories agree that the dynamics of spoken word recognition
are important, they differ in how they treat the nature of the competitor
set precisely which words are activated as an auditory word form
unfolds in real time. This study used eye tracking to measure the
impact over time of word frequency and 2 partially overlapping competitor
set definitions: onset density and neighborhood density. Time course
measures revealed early and continuous effects of frequency (facilitatory)
and on set based similarity (inhibitory). Neighborhood density appears
to have early facilitatory effects and late inhibitory effects. The
late inhibitory effects are due to differences in the temporal distribution
of similarity within neighborhoods. The early facilitatory effects
are due to subphonemic cues that inform the listener about word length
before the entire word is heard. The results support a new conception
of lexical competition neighborhoods in which recognition occurs
against a background of activated competitors that changes over time
based on fine-grained goodness-of-fit and competition dynamics.
