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Phoneme-monitoring reaction time as a function of preceding intonation contour

Perception & Psychophysics volume 20, pages 55–60 (1976)Cite this article

Abstract

An acoustically invariant one-word segment occurred in two versions of one syntactic context. In one version, the preceding intonation contour indicated that a stress would fall at the point where this word occurred. In the other version, the preceding contour predicted reduced stress at that point. Reaction time to the initial phoneme of the word was faster in the former case, despite the fact that no acoustic correlates of stress were present. It is concluded that a part of the sentence comprehension process is the prediction of upcoming sentence accents.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 02139, Cambridge, Massachusetts

    Anne Cutler

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  1. Anne Cutler
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Additional information

This study formed part of a dissertation presented to the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin.

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Cutler, A. Phoneme-monitoring reaction time as a function of preceding intonation contour. Perception & Psychophysics 20, 55–60 (1976). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03198706

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03198706

Keywords

  • Mental Lexicon
  • Nonsense Word
  • Reaction Time Difference
  • Stressed Syllable
  • Experimental Sentence