Abstract:
Selective adaptation occurs through the repeated presentation of a sound (the ``adaptor''), and leads to a reduction in the perception of similar sounds. Adaptation has been used to investigate the nature of early speech representations. Work in this laboratory has recently demonstrated that perceptually restored phonemes can produce reliable adaptation effects, and that these effects are occurring at relatively early levels (e.g., phonemic rather than lexical) of processing [A. G. Samuel, Cognitive Psychology (in press)]. The current study is designed to determine whether the adaptation effects are so low-level and automatic that they do not require cognitive resources. There are three conditions in the current study: (1) adaptation alone (control), (2) adaptation during continuous arithmetic problems, and (3) adaptation during continuous rhyming judgments (presented visually). Preliminary results indicate that continuously solving arithmetic problems does not reduce the adaptation effect, indicating no general cognitive involvement in adaptation. The rhyming task tests for any more specific involvement of language processors. Immunity to this secondary task would support a very low-level, automatic basis for adaptation. [Work supported by NIMH.]