Effects of stress typicality during spoken word recognition by native and nonnative speakers of English: evidence from onset gating.

Onset gating was used to investigate the effects of stress typicality during the processing of disyllabic nouns and verbs by 34 native and 36 nonnative speakers of English. We utilized 50-msec increments and included two conditions. In the silenced condition, only word onsets were presented (the participants had no information about the duration or stress pattern of the entire word). In the filtered condition, word onsets were presented with a low-pass filtered version of the remainder of the word (this type of filtering provides duration and stress information in the absence of phonemic information). The results demonstrated significant effects of stress typicality in both groups of speakers. Typically stressed trochaic nouns and iambic verbs exhibited advantaged processing, as compared with atypically stressed iambic nouns and trochaic verbs. There was no significant effect of presentation condition (silenced or filtered). The results are discussed in light of recent research in which the effects of lexical stress during spoken word recognition have been investigated.