The effect of voice onset time differences on lexical access in Dutch
Effects on spoken-word recognition of prevoicing differences in Dutch initial voiced plosives were
examined. In 2 cross-modal identity-priming experiments, participants heard prime words and nonwords
beginning with voiced plosives with 12, 6, or 0 periods of prevoicing or matched items beginning with
voiceless plosives and made lexical decisions to visual tokens of those items. Six-period primes had the
same effect as 12-period primes. Zero-period primes had a different effect, but only when their voiceless
counterparts were real words. Listeners could nevertheless discriminate the 6-period primes from the 12-
and 0-period primes. Phonetic detail appears to influence lexical access only to the extent that it is useful:
In Dutch, presence versus absence of prevoicing is more informative than amount of prevoicing.
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