The Role of Additional Processing Time and Lexical Constraint in Spoken Word Recognition

Auditory word recognition proceeds fluidly despite numerous perturbations and obstacles that exist in the form of acoustic-phonetic variability. A significant amount of research suggests that spoken word recognition processes accommodate variability in order to ensure recognition of the intended word. In the research reported here, we investigate the role of additional processing time for spoken word recognition and its role when there is mismatching information (both segmental and subcategorical). Three phoneme monitoring experiments examined the manner in which additional processing time influences spoken word recognition. Experiment 1a introduced a version of the phoneme monitoring paradigm in which a silent interval is inserted prior to the word-final target phoneme. Phoneme monitoring reaction time decreased as the silent interval increased indicating that lexical knowledge was utilized more effectively with additional processing time. Experiment 1b used short, medium, and long words and derived nonwords with word-initial mismatching segments. Phoneme monitorin