Lexical influence in phonetic decision-making: Evidence from subcategorical mismatches

In a series of experiments, listeners heard words and nonwords, some cross-spliced so that they contained acoustic-phonetic mismatches. Performance was worse on mismatching than on matching items. Words cross-spliced with words and words cross-spliced with nonwords produced parallel results. But in lexical decision and one of three phonetic decision experiments, performance on nonwords cross-spliced with words was poorer than on nonwords cross-spliced with nonwords. A gating study confirmed that there were misleading coarticulatory cues in the cross-spliced items; a final experiment showed that the earlier results were not due to inter-item differences in the strength of these cues. Three models of phonetic decision-making (the Race model, TRACE, and a postlexical model) are all unable to explain the data. We outline a new bottom-up model which accounts for the findings in terms of lexical involvement at a dedicated decision-making stage.

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