Two experiments investigated how people perceived and remembered fragments of spoken words that either
corresponded to correct lexical entries (as in the complex word
drink-er) or did not (as in the simple word
glitt-er).
Experiment 1 was a noise-rating task that probed perception.
Participants heard stimuli such
drinker, where strikethrough indicates noise overlaid at a
controlled signal-to-noise ratio, and rated the loudness of the noise. Results showed that participants rated noise on certain
pseudo-roots (e.g.,
glitter) as louder than noise on true roots
(
drinker), indicating that they perceived them with less clarity.
Experiment 2 was an eye-fixation task that probed memory. Participants heard a word such as
drink-er while associating each fragment with a visual shape. At test, they saw the shapes again, and were
asked to look at the shape associated with a particular fragment, such as
drink. Results showed that fixations to
shapes associated with pseudo-affixes (
-er in
glitter) were less accurate than fixations to
shapes associated with true affixes (
-er in
drinker), which suggests that they remembered the
pseudo-affixes more poorly. These findings provide evidence that the presence of correct lexical entries for roots and affixes
modulates people’s judgments about the speech that they hear.