Re: Phoneme versus word recognition. (Brent Edwards )

Subject: Re: Phoneme versus word recognition.
From:    Brent Edwards  <brent(at)edwards.net>
Date:    Fri, 14 Feb 2003 14:07:55 -0800

Boothroyd and Nittrouer ("Mathematical treatment of context effects in
phoneme and word recognition," J Acoust Soc Am. 1988 Jul;84(1):101-14)
looked at CVC word recognition as a function of recognition of the
individual phonemes. He found for *nonsense* CVCs that the probabilities of
recognizing the word  (p_word) and for recognizing the phonemes (p_phoneme)
are related as follows:

p_word=(p_phoneme)^3

indicating that the phonemes are independent components. For *meaningful*
CVCs,

p_word=(p_phoneme)^2.5

indicating the superiority of identifying each phoneme when they are grouped
together in a meaningful word. Is this what you are looking for?

--Brent

----- Original Message -----
From: "Al Bregman" <al.bregman(at)MCGILL.CA>
To: <AUDITORY(at)LISTS.MCGILL.CA>
Sent: Friday, February 14, 2003 1:39 PM
Subject: Phoneme versus word recognition.


> Dear list ,
>
> A graduate student at McGill has done some research with narrow band
noises
> of ambiguous pitch, showing that people are good at identifying melodies
> made of these types of notes, even though they are poor at matching the
> pitch of the individual notes.  I thought that there might be some
relation
> to the "word superiority effect" in reading (we have many references) and
in
> speech perception.  On the latter topic we have been able to find only one
> article, Norris & Cutler (1988).  Does anyone know of other examples of
the
> superiority of recognizing a larger unit, even though there is a lot of
> uncertainty about the component units?  Are there examples in music?
>
> We would appreciate any information on this topic.
>
> - Al
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> Albert S. Bregman, FRSC
> Emeritus Professor
> Dept. of Psychology, McGill University
> 1205 Docteur Penfield Ave.
> Montreal, QC  Canada  H3A 1B1
>
> Office Tel: (514) 398-6103, Fax -4896
> Home Tel. & Fax: (514) 484-2592
> E-mail: al.bregman(at)mcgill.ca
> -----------------------------------------------------------