Social Priming in Speech Perception: Revisiting Kangaroo/Kiwi Priming in New Zealand English

Brain Sciences

Ryan Podlubny¹  Laura Manhire²  Alix Ellis²  Katie Drager³  Jennifer Hay⁴  Gia Hurring⁴ 

[1] Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2G4, Canada;Department of Linguistics, University of Canterbury, 20 Kirkwood Avenue, Upper Riccarton, Christchurch 8041, New Zealand;Department of Linguistics, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 1890 East-West Rd, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA;New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain, and Behaviour, University of Canterbury, 20 Kirkwood Avenue, Upper Riccarton, Christchurch 8041, New Zealand;

关键词: priming;    speech perception;    sociophonetics;    lexical decision task;    New Zealand English;    Australian English;   

DOI  :  10.3390/brainsci12060684

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

We investigate whether regionally-associated primes can affect speech perception in two lexical decision tasks in which New Zealand listeners were exposed to an Australian prime (a kangaroo), a New Zealand prime (a kiwi), and/or a control animal (a horse). The target stimuli involve ambiguous vowels, embedded in a frame that would result in a real word with a KIT or a DRESS vowel and a nonsense word with the alternative vowel; thus, lexical decision responses can reveal which vowel was heard. Our pre-registered design predicted that exposure to the kangaroo would elicit more KIT-consistent responses than exposure to the kiwi. Both experiments showed significant priming effects in which the kangaroo elicited more KIT-consistent responses than the kiwi. The particular locus and details of these effects differed across experiments and participants. Taken together, the experiments reinforce the finding that regionally-associated primes can affect speech perception, but also suggest that the effects are sensitive to experimental design, stimulus acoustics, and individuals’ production and past experience.

【 授权许可】

Unknown