Finding Words and Rules in a Speech Stream: Functional Differences Between Vowels and Consonants.

A study was conducted to test the symmetrical hypothesis that when subjects listen to words in a speech stream they tend to exploit relations among vowels to extract generalizations but tend to disregard the same relations among consonants. Data were obtained from four experiments undertaken with I...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Psychological Science. Vol. 19; no. 2; pp. 137 - 145
Autores principales: Toro, Juan M., Nespor, Marina, Mehler, Jacques, Bonatti, Luca L.
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: HWW Temp February 2008
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:A study was conducted to test the symmetrical hypothesis that when subjects listen to words in a speech stream they tend to exploit relations among vowels to extract generalizations but tend to disregard the same relations among consonants. Data were obtained from four experiments undertaken with Italian students, in which participants could segment words on the basis of transitional probabilities in one tier and could extract a structural regularity in the other tier. Findings indicated that participants used consonants to extract words but vowels to extract a structural generalization. Findings suggested that they were unable to extract the same generalization using consonants, even when word segmentation was facilitated and the generalization made simpler. Findings imply that different signal-driven computations prime lexical and grammatical processing. Findings are discussed in detail.