Phonetic priming of features in a shadowing task

The role of features in speech perception was investigated in a series of priming experiments in which subjects shadowed CV syllables consisting of the English consonants [p, b, t, d, f, v, s, z] followed by the vowel [a]. Natural tokens were used to create sixty-four prime-target pairs which varied critically the number of features the consonants shared (0-3) and the type of featural similarity. Subjects were asked to repeat
the target syllables from aurally presented prime-target pairs as fast as possible. Patterns of speech onset latencies and accuracy data were compared for the different featural similarity conditions.

The results indicate that there is inhibitory phonetic priming of specific place and manner features but that the influences of the prime and target features are more complex than simple shared activation of a particular feature.

Results are also discussed with reference to previous [mdings from a series of gating experiments (using
the same stimulus set manipulation) which found that subjects given place information had significantly higher scores in a consonant identification task than subjects given manner information (Doeleman, 1998).