"How to milk a coat": The effect of acoustic parameter and semantic sentence context on phonemic categorization and lexical selection

This experiment investigated the role of sentence meaning in auditory language comprehension. Tokens from a GOAT-COAT speech voicing continuum were embedded in carrier sentences that were biased toward either a "goat" or "coat" interpretation and presented to subjects for a word identification task. The identification function showed a boundary shift in favor of the biased context, and an interaction localized to the ambiguous boundary region. Response times were largest in the boundary region and the interaction between the two factors was localized to the boundary region and the voiced endpoint. There was also a response time advantage for context consistent responses specifically in the boundary region. These results and those of earlier research (Connine, 1987; Connine & Clifton, 1987) are described in terms of interactive activation of potential response categories by acoustic parameter and sentence context.