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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology of Language
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1446240

Temporal dynamics of coarticulatory cues to prediction

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
  • 2 The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The temporal dynamics of the perception of within-word coarticulatory cues remain a subject of ongoing debate in speech perception research. This behavioral gating study sheds light on the unfolding predictive use of anticipatory coarticulation in onset fricatives. Word onset fricatives (/f/ and /s/) were split into four gates (15, 35, 75 and 135 milliseconds). Listeners made a forced choice about the word they were listening to, based on the stimulus gates. The results showed fast predictive use of coarticulatory lip rounding during /s/ word onsets, as early as 15 ms from word onset. For /f/ onsets, coarticulatory backness and height began to be used predictively after 75 ms. These findings indicate that onset times of the occurrence and use of coarticulatory cues can be extremely fast and have a time course that differs depending on fricative type.

    Keywords: speech perception1, coarticulation2, gating3, auditory processing4, prediction5

    Received: 09 Jun 2024; Accepted: 27 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Lulaci, Söderström, Tronnier and Roll. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Tugba Lulaci, Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

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