Word recognition and phonology: The case of English coronal place assimilation

Gradient English coronal place assimilation has been shown to produce both progressive and regressive context effects in spoken language perception. In two experiments, the current work examines the timecourse of these effects using the visual world paradigm. In Experiment 1 listeners showed earlier looks to pictures of an object with a noncoronal-initial name (e.g. boat) when it was preceded by an appropriately assimilated item (e.g. green pronounced with labial assimilation of the final coronal) than when it was preceded by an unmodified token of the same word (green). Experiment 2 employed items that produced potential lexical ambiguity due to assimilation (e.g. assimilation of the /t/ in cat box produces a token that resembles cap box) to examine regressive and progressive effects concurrently. Progressive effects analogous to those in Experiment 1 were found, albeit somewhat later, suggesting a role of lexical factors in processing. In addition, a regressive effect was shown as listeners favored images depicting cats when the immediate context was labial (e.g. cat box) and caps when the context was coronal (cat drawing). The regressive effect occurred later than the progressive effect. These results are discussed in the context of evolving lexical activation dynamics.