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Liu & Jaeger (2019, JEP:HPP). Talker-specific pronunciation or speech error? Accounting (or not) for atypical pronunciations during speech perception
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Description: Liu, L., & Jaeger, T. F. (2019). Talker-specific pronunciation or speech error? Discounting (or not) atypical pronunciations during speech perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 45(12), 1562–1588. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000693 Perceptual recalibration allows listeners to adapt to talker-specific pronunciations, such as atypical realizations of specific sounds. Such recalibration can facilitate robust speech recognition. However, indiscriminate recalibration following any atypically pronounced words also risks interpreting pronunciations as characteristic of a talker that are in reality due to incidental, short-lived factors (such as a speech error). We investigate whether the mechanisms underlying perceptual recalibration involve inferences about the causes for unexpected pronunciations. In five experiments, we ask whether perceptual recalibration is blocked if the atypical pronunciations of an unfamiliar talker can also be attributed to other incidental causes. We investigated three potential incidental causes for atypical pronunciations: the talker is intoxicated, the talker speaks unusually fast, or the atypical pronunciations occur only in the context of tongue twisters. In all five experiments, we find robust evidence for perceptual recalibration, but little evidence that the presence of incidental causes block perceptual recalibration. We discuss these results in light of other recent findings that incidental causes can block perceptual recalibration.
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