Rysling at Psychonomics

Lexical  Knowledge  Is  Available,  But  Not  Always  Used,  Very  Early.
AMANDA  RYSLING, JOHN  KINGSTON, ADRIAN STAUB, ANDREW    COHEN    and    JEFFREY   STARNS

Two  response-signal studies investigated when lexical knowledge influences phonetic categorization  of  a  word-initial  /s-f/  continuum,  in  lexical  contexts  that biased  response  toward  /s/  (-ide),  /f/  (-ile),  or  neither (-ime). In Exp. 1, participants responded within 300ms starting at 375, 675, 975, or 1350ms after stimulus onset. They responded “f” more often in the /f/-biasing context at all delays, more at 675 than 375ms, but no more at 975 or 1350ms. In Exp. 2,  participants  responded  at  175  and  375ms.  No  lexical  bias appeared  at  175ms,  when  listeners  responded  before  hearing enough of the stimulus, nor until the second half of the 375ms response  interval.  At  375ms,  responses  in  Exp.  1  clustered  in the second half of the response interval, while responses in Exp. 2 were distributed throughout. These experiments demonstrate that  lexical  knowledge  is  available,  but  not  always  used,  to inform responses very early.