Perception of anticipatory coarticulation effects in vowel-stop consonant-bowel sequences.

Articulatory and acoustic studies of speech production have shown that the effects of anticipatory coarticulation may extend across several segments of an utterance. The present experiments show that such effects have perceptual significance. In two experiments, a talker produced consonant (C) and vowel (V) sequences in a sentence frame (e.g., "I say pookee") of the form "I say / C V1 C V2/" in which V1 was /u, ae/ and V2 was /i, a/. Each /i, a/ sentence pair was cross-spliced by exchanging the final syllable /C V2/ so that coarticulatory information prior to the crosspoint was inappropriate for te final vowel (V2) in crossed sentences. Recognition time (RT) for V2 in crossed and intact (as spoken) sentences was obtained from practiced listeners. In both experiments RT was slower in crossed sentences; crossed sentences also attracted more false alarms. The pattern of perceptual results was mirrored in the pattern of precross acoustic differences in experimental sentences (e.g., formants F2 and F3 were higher preceding /i/ than preceding /a/). Pretarget variation in the formants jointly predicted amount of RT interference in crossed sentences. A third experiment found interference (slower RT) and also facilitation (faster RT) from exchanges of pretarget coarticulatory information in sentences. Two final experiments showed that previous results were not dependent on the use of practiced listeners.