Representational specificity of lexical form in the perception of spoken words

The specificity of form‐based lexical representations of spoken words was examined. Using a repetition‐priming paradigm, we attempted to determine (1) if flapped intervocalic alveolar stops in American English are mapped onto underlying representations of /t/, /d/, or both or (2) if flaps have an independent representational status. Participants shadowed or made lexical decisions to spoken words in two blocks of trials. Stimuli in the first block served as primes and those in the second block as targets. Primes and targets consisted of flapped and carefully articulated bisyllabic words. We measured reaction times to target words in the second block as a function of prime type. The results provide evidence for both underlying and surface perceptual representations.