No lexically-driven perceptual adjustments of the [x]-[h] boundary
Listeners can make perceptual adjustments to
phoneme categories in response to a talker who consistently
produces a specific phoneme ambiguously.
We investigate here whether this type of perceptual
learning is also used to adapt to regional accent differences.
Listeners were exposed to words produced
by a Flemish talker whose realization of [x℄or [h℄
was ambiguous (producing [x℄like [h℄is a property
of the West-Flanders regional accent). Before and
after exposure they categorized a [x℄-[h℄continuum.
For both Dutch and Flemish listeners there was no
shift of the categorization boundary after exposure
to ambiguous sounds in [x℄- or [h℄-biasing contexts.
The absence of a lexically-driven learning effect for
this contrast may be because [h℄is strongly influenced
by coarticulation. As is not stable across
contexts, it may be futile to adapt its representation
when new realizations are heard
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