Departement of Developmental Psychology and Socialization, University of Padua, Padova, Italy.
Padua Neuroscience Center, University of Padua, Padova, Italy.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2024 Oct;31(5):2332-2344. doi: 10.3758/s13423-024-02488-2. Epub 2024 Mar 25.
Most models of language comprehension assume that the linguistic system is able to pre-activate phonological information. However, the evidence for phonological prediction is mixed and controversial. In this study, we implement a paradigm that capitalizes on the fact that foreign speakers usually make phonological errors. We investigate whether speaker identity (native vs. foreign) is used to make specific phonological predictions. Fifty-two participants were recruited to read sentence frames followed by a last spoken word which was uttered by either a native or a foreign speaker. They were required to perform a lexical decision on the last spoken word, which could be either semantically predictable or not. Speaker identity (native vs. foreign) may or may not be cued by the face of the speaker. We observed that the face cue is effective in speeding up the lexical decision when the word is predictable, but it is not effective when the word is not predictable. This result shows that speech prediction takes into account the phonological variability between speakers, suggesting that it is possible to pre-activate in a detailed and specific way the phonological representation of a predictable word.
大多数语言理解模型都假设语言系统能够预先激活语音信息。然而，语音预测的证据是混合的，有争议的。在这项研究中，我们采用了一种利用外国说话者通常会犯语音错误这一事实的范式。我们调查了说话者身份（母语者与外国人）是否用于做出特定的语音预测。52 名参与者被招募来阅读句子框架，然后是最后一个由母语者或外国人说出的单词。他们被要求对最后一个说出的单词进行词汇判断，这个单词可以是语义上可预测的，也可以是不可预测的。说话者的身份（母语者与外国人）可能会或可能不会通过说话者的脸来提示。我们发现，当单词可预测时，面部提示可以有效地加快词汇判断的速度，但当单词不可预测时，面部提示则无效。这个结果表明，语音预测考虑了说话者之间的语音变异性，这表明有可能以详细和具体的方式预先激活可预测单词的语音表示。
