Stress is an important property of English spoken words. Research conducted over the past 70 years has sought to determine how acoustic cues, including duration, pitch, and intensity influence stress perception; however, the evidence remains conflicting. In the present study, we used a large dataset of 10 speakers’ productions of disyllabic nonwords to investigate how listeners make use of these cues to perceive stress. Over 100 listeners made stress judgements on nearly one thousand items each, yielding a total of nearly 75,000 analysable responses. Results of average performance showed that stress judgments were influenced by all three cues, both individually and in combination. However, the relative importance of any one cue depended on the value of the other cues, particularly in the frequent situations in which cues offered conflicting stress information. Results of individual performance showed that listeners often use the same acoustic information regarding stress in different ways, but that speakers also sometimes offer different information about stress. Our mega-study approach to investigating word-stress perception eclipses previous studies in terms of its power, and offers new insights into our understanding of how listeners perceive stress.

中文翻译：

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言语感知中压力的声学相关性

重音是英语口语单词的一个重要属性。过去 70 年进行的研究一直试图确定声学线索（包括持续时间、音高和强度）如何影响压力感知；然而，证据仍然相互矛盾。在本研究中，我们使用了 10 位说话者发出的双音节非单词的大型数据集来研究听众如何利用这些线索来感知压力。超过 100 名听众分别对近千个项目进行了压力判断，总共产生了近 75,000 个可分析的答案。平均表现结果表明，压力判断受到所有三种线索的影响，无论是单独的还是组合的。然而，任何一种线索的相对重要性取决于其他线索的价值，特别是在线索经常提供相互冲突的压力信息的情况下。个人表演的结果表明，听众经常以不同的方式使用相同的有关压力的声音信息，但演讲者有时也会提供不同的有关压力的信息。我们调查单词重音感知的大型研究方法在其力量方面超越了之前的研究，并为我们理解听众如何感知压力提供了新的见解。