Date of Award

2009

Degree Type

Thesis

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

McLennan, Conor

Subject Headings

Speech perception, Word recognition, Priming (Psychology)

Abstract

Previous work demonstrates that talker-specific details tend to affect language perception relatively late in processing. One possible explanation for this time-course effect may be that the listeners in the previous study were presented with unfamiliar talkers. Under conditions where one has been repeatedly exposed to a talker, as is typically the case with famous people, talker-specific details may affect perceptual processing relatively early. The present research sought to explore the potential for relatively early talker effects in the perception of words spoken by famous talkers in a speeded-shadowing task. Words were presented using a long-term repetition priming paradigm where half of the words were spoken by Barack Obama and half were spoken by Hillary Clinton during both the prime and target blocks. During the speeded-shadowing task in the present study reaction times in the target block were longer when the same word was spoken by a different talker in the prime block relative to when the same word was spoken by the same talker in both the prime and target blocks. The results obtained in the present study demonstrate that talker-specific details can affect the perception of spoken words relatively early during processing

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