TY - JOUR
T1 - Eye movements reveal fast, voice-specific priming
AU - Papesh, Megan H.
AU - Goldinger, Stephen
AU - Hout, Michael C.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by NICHD Grant R01 HD075800-02, awarded to S. D. Goldinger. We thank Monica Poore, Kyle Brady, Geoff McKinley, and Gabrielle Muniz for their assistance with data collection, and Melissa Miola, Tresa Marchi, Joel Chabrier, Rachelle Friedman, Suhani Mehrotra, Jessie Moecia, and Jorin Larsen for assistance creating the stimuli.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 American Psychological Association.
PY - 2016/3/1
Y1 - 2016/3/1
N2 - In spoken word perception, voice specificity effects are well-documented: When people hear repeated words in some task, performance is generally better when repeated items are presented in their originally heard voices, relative to changed voices. A key theoretical question about voice specificity effects concerns their time-course: Some studies suggest that episodic traces exert their influence late in lexical processing (the time-course hypothesis; McLennan & Luce, 2005), whereas others suggest that episodic traces influence immediate, online processing. We report 2 eye-tracking studies investigating the time-course of voice-specific priming within and across cognitive tasks. In Experiment 1, participants performed modified lexical decision or semantic classification to words spoken by 4 speakers. The tasks required participants to click a red "x" or a blue "+" located randomly within separate visual half-fields, necessitating trial-by-trial visual search with consistent half-field response mapping. After a break, participants completed a second block with new and repeated items, half spoken in changed voices. Voice effects were robust very early, appearing in saccade initiation times. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern while changing tasks across blocks, ruling out a response priming account. In the General Discussion, we address the time-course hypothesis, focusing on the challenge it presents for empirical disconfirmation, and highlighting the broad importance of indexical effects, beyond studies of priming.
AB - In spoken word perception, voice specificity effects are well-documented: When people hear repeated words in some task, performance is generally better when repeated items are presented in their originally heard voices, relative to changed voices. A key theoretical question about voice specificity effects concerns their time-course: Some studies suggest that episodic traces exert their influence late in lexical processing (the time-course hypothesis; McLennan & Luce, 2005), whereas others suggest that episodic traces influence immediate, online processing. We report 2 eye-tracking studies investigating the time-course of voice-specific priming within and across cognitive tasks. In Experiment 1, participants performed modified lexical decision or semantic classification to words spoken by 4 speakers. The tasks required participants to click a red "x" or a blue "+" located randomly within separate visual half-fields, necessitating trial-by-trial visual search with consistent half-field response mapping. After a break, participants completed a second block with new and repeated items, half spoken in changed voices. Voice effects were robust very early, appearing in saccade initiation times. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern while changing tasks across blocks, ruling out a response priming account. In the General Discussion, we address the time-course hypothesis, focusing on the challenge it presents for empirical disconfirmation, and highlighting the broad importance of indexical effects, beyond studies of priming.
KW - Exemplar models
KW - Eye movements
KW - Priming effects
KW - Spoken word perception
KW - Voice specificity effects
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U2 - 10.1037/xge0000135
DO - 10.1037/xge0000135
M3 - Article
C2 - 26726911
AN - SCOPUS:84958913654
VL - 145
SP - 314
EP - 337
JO - Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
JF - Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
SN - 0096-3445
IS - 3
ER -