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The time course of auditory and language-specific mechanisms in compensation for sibilant assimilation

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An Erratum to this article was published on 09 November 2015

Abstract

Models of spoken-word recognition differ on whether compensation for assimilation is language-specific or depends on general auditory processing. English and French participants were taught words that began or ended with the sibilants /s/ and /∫/. Both languages exhibit some assimilation in sibilant sequences (e.g., /s/ becomes like [∫] in dress shop and classe chargée), but they differ in the strength and predominance of anticipatory versus carryover assimilation. After training, participants were presented with novel words embedded in sentences, some of which contained an assimilatory context either preceding or following. A continuum of target sounds ranging from [s] to [∫] was spliced into the novel words, representing a range of possible assimilation strengths. Listeners’ perceptions were examined using a visual-world eyetracking paradigm in which the listener clicked on pictures matching the novel words. We found two distinct language-general context effects: a contrastive effect when the assimilating context preceded the target, and flattening of the sibilant categorization function (increased ambiguity) when the assimilating context followed. Furthermore, we found that English but not French listeners were able to resolve the ambiguity created by the following assimilatory context, consistent with their greater experience with assimilation in this context. The combination of these mechanisms allows listeners to deal flexibly with variability in speech forms.

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Notes

  1. Note, however, that this was only true when the frication portions of the sibilants were considered. Acoustic measurements of the surrounding vowels showed small but reliable traces of the unassimilated segments (Niebuhr & Meunier, 2011). These vowel differences, which can serve as acoustic cues to the place of articulation, were not part of the stimuli used in the present study.

  2. Partially assimilated sibilants with intermediate frication of this type were observed by Niebuhr et al. (Niebuhr et al., 2011; Niebuhr, Lancia, & Meunier, 2008) and by Holst and Nolan (1995). Tokens in which the [∫] portion of the sibilant sequence was longer than would be expected were also observed, but this type of partial assimilation was not used here.

  3. The modified sibilants were 65 dB, and the amplitude of the words they were spliced onto (“-amal” and “cavee-”) was 70 dB. The amplitude of the first four pitch cycles of “-amal” was ramped slightly to prevent artifacts from a sudden onset. The sibilants and the words were spliced together with a 5-ms overlap to produce a natural sibilant–vowel transition.

  4. A few participants did both testing blocks on the same day, but in those cases the blocks were separated by at least a half-hour break.

  5. This effect was not significant when the data from the English speaker were included, but it is not of interest.

  6. The /s/ vs. /∫/ by CoG step interaction and the interaction between these two factors and Listener Group were significant for the analysis including the data from both talkers. This was likely due to the fact that for the English listeners, all but the most [∫]-like of the English talker’s target sibilants were classified as /s/. This produced a ceiling effect for the /∫/ context that made the effect of step different for this context than for the others.

  7. Note that an interaction between CoG step and context was found in the eye-movement data for the shamal–samal trials, which could indicate some masking/perceptual integration for this context as well. However, both the pattern and the time course were somewhat different than in the caveesh–cavees trials, and we do not believe that it was the same mechanism.

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Author note

The authors thank Gerry Altmann, Dirk Kertzel, and Uli Fraunfelder for the use of their eyetrackers and lab space, and Holger Mitterer for comments on a previous version of this manuscript. Portions of this work were presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society in Boston, 2009, and the 10th International Symposium on Psycholinguistics, Donastia San-Sebastian, 2011. This research was supported by the Marie Curie training network Sound to Sense.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Meghan Clayards

  2. School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Meghan Clayards

  3. Department of General and Comparative Linguistics, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Oliver Niebuhr

  4. Department of Psychology, University of York, York, UK

    M. Gareth Gaskell

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  1. Meghan Clayards
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  2. Oliver Niebuhr
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  3. M. Gareth Gaskell
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Correspondence to Meghan Clayards.

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Clayards, M., Niebuhr, O. & Gaskell, M.G. The time course of auditory and language-specific mechanisms in compensation for sibilant assimilation. Atten Percept Psychophys 77, 311–328 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-014-0750-z

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