Dataset Information

Working Memory Load Affects Processing Time in Spoken Word Recognition: Evidence from Eye-Movements.

ABSTRACT: In daily life, speech perception is usually accompanied by other tasks that tap into working memory capacity. However, the role of working memory on speech processing is not clear. The goal of this study was to examine how working memory load affects the timeline for spoken word recognition in ideal listening conditions. We used the "visual world" eye-tracking paradigm. The task consisted of spoken instructions referring to one of four objects depicted on a computer monitor (e.g., "point at the candle"). Half of the trials presented a phonological competitor to the target word that either overlapped in the initial syllable (onset) or at the last syllable (offset). Eye movements captured listeners' ability to differentiate the target noun from its depicted phonological competitor (e.g., candy or sandal). We manipulated working memory load by using a digit pre-load task, where participants had to retain either one (low-load) or four (high-load) spoken digits for the duration of a spoken word recognition trial. The data show that the high-load condition delayed real-time target discrimination. Specifically, a four-digit load was sufficient to delay the point of discrimination between the spoken target word and its phonological competitor. Our results emphasize the important role working memory plays in speech perception, even when performed by young adults in ideal listening conditions.

SUBMITTER: Hadar B

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4871876 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:This study investigated the relative role of sub-syllabic components (initial consonant, rime, and tone) in spoken word recognition of Mandarin Chinese using an eye-tracking experiment with a visual world paradigm. Native Mandarin speakers (all born and grew up in Beijing) were presented with four pictures and an auditory stimulus. They were required to click the picture according to the sound stimulus they heard, and their eye movements were tracked during this process. For a target word (e.g., tang2 "candy"), nine conditions of competitors were constructed in terms of the amount of their phonological overlap with the target: consonant competitor (e.g., ti1 "ladder"), rime competitor (e.g., lang4 "wave"), tone competitor (e.g., niu2 "cow"), consonant plus rime competitor (e.g., tang1"soup"), consonant plus tone competitor (e.g., tou2 "head"), rime plus tone competitor (e.g., yang2 "sheep"), cohort competitor (e.g., ta3 "tower"), cohort plus tone competitor (e.g., tao2 "peach"), and baseline competitor (e.g., xue3 "snow"). A growth curve analysis was conducted with the fixation to competitors, targets, and distractors, and the results showed that (1) competitors with consonant or rime overlap can be adequately activated, while tone overlap plays a weaker role since additional tonal information can strengthen the competitive effect only when it was added to a candidate that already bears much phonological similarity with the target. (2) Mandarin words are processed in an incremental way in the time course of word recognition since different partially overlapping competitors could be activated immediately; (3) like the pattern found in English, both cohort and rime competitors were activated to compete for lexical activation, but these two competitors were not temporally distinctive and mainly differed in the size of their competitive effects. Generally, the gradation of activation based on the phonological similarity between target and candidates found in this study was in line with the continuous mapping models and may reflect a strategy of native speakers shaped by the informative characteristics of the interaction among different sub-syllabic components.

Dataset Information

Working Memory Load Affects Processing Time in Spoken Word Recognition: Evidence from Eye-Movements.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets