No delays in application of perceptual learning in speech recognition: Evidence from eye tracking
Three eye-tracking experiments tested at what processing stage lexically-guided retuning
of a fricative contrast affects perception. One group of participants heard an ambiguous
fricative between /s/ and /f/ replace /s/ in s-final words, the other group heard the same
ambiguous fricative replacing /f/ in f-final words. In a test phase, both groups of participants
heard a range of ambiguous fricatives at the end of Dutch minimal pairs (e.g.,
roos-roof, ‘rose’-‘robbery’). Participants who heard the ambiguous fricative replacing /f/
during exposure chose at test the f-final words more often than the other participants. During
this test-phase, eye-tracking data showed that the effect of exposure exerted itself as
soon as it could possibly have occurred, 200 ms after the onset of the fricative. This was
at the same time as the onset of the effect of the fricative itself, showing that the perception
of the fricative is changed by perceptual learning at an early level. Results converged in a
time-window analysis and a Jackknife procedure testing the time at which effects reached
a given proportion of their maxima. This indicates that perceptual learning affects early
stages of speech processing, and supports the conclusion that perceptual learning is indeed
perceptual rather than post-perceptual.
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