Using the visual world paradigm with printed words, this study investigated the flexibility and representational nature of phonological prediction in real-time speech processing. Native speakers of Mandarin Chinese listened to spoken sentences containing highly predictable target words and viewed a visual array with a critical word and a distractor word on the screen. The critical word was manipulated in four ways: a highly predictable target word, a homophone competitor, a tonal competitor, or an unrelated word. Participants showed a preference for fixating on the homophone competitors before hearing the highly predictable target word. The predicted phonological information waned shortly but was re-activated later around the acoustic onset of the target word. Importantly, this homophone bias was observed only when participants were completing a ‘pronunciation judgement’ task, but not when they were completing a ‘word judgement’ task. No effect was found for the tonal competitors. The task modulation effect, combined with the temporal pattern of phonological pre-activation, indicates that phonological prediction can be flexibly generated by top-down mechanisms. The lack of tonal competitor effect suggests that phonological features such as lexical tone are not independently predicted for anticipatory speech processing.

中文翻译：

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听力理解中语音预测的灵活性和表征性：来自视觉世界范式的证据

本研究使用印刷文字的视觉世界范式，研究了实时语音处理中语音预测的灵活性和表征性质。以普通话为母语的人听包含高度可预测的目标词的口语句子，并在屏幕上观看带有批评词和干扰词的视觉阵列。关键词以四种方式被操纵：高度可预测的目标词、同音竞争者、声调竞争者或不相关的词。在听到高度可预测的目标词之前，参与者表现出倾向于关注同音竞争对手。预测的语音信息很快减弱，但随后在目标词的声学开始附近重新激活。重要的，仅当参与者完成“发音判断”任务时才会观察到这种同音偏差，而当他们完成“单词判断”任务时则不会观察到这种同音偏差。没有发现对音调竞争对手有任何影响。任务调制效应与语音预激活的时间模式相结合，表明语音预测可以通过自上而下的机制灵活地生成。缺乏语调竞争者效应表明，诸如词汇语气之类的语音特征并不是针对预期语音处理进行独立预测的。表明语音预测可以通过自上而下的机制灵活地生成。缺乏语调竞争者效应表明，诸如词汇语气之类的语音特征并不是针对预期语音处理进行独立预测的。表明语音预测可以通过自上而下的机制灵活地生成。缺乏语调竞争者效应表明，诸如词汇语气之类的语音特征并不是针对预期语音处理进行独立预测的。