Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity Influence Spoken WordRecognition

Prior work has shown that when speech is unclear, listeners show a greater dependenceupon semantic than on acoustic information to aid word identification when distractingstimuli (e.g., other talkers) are present. The current project extended this work to explorewhether individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) would influence thelikelihood that listeners will depend on the biasing information when distracted. In fiveexperiments, participants heard sentences that contained an early target word with orwithout noise at its onset and a subsequent word that was semantically biased in favor ofthe target word or one of its lexical competitors (e.g., The wing had an exquisite set offeathers or The wing had an exquisite set of diamonds where diamonds would besemantically associated with ring). The sentences were presented in the presence ofdistracters ranging in their degree of signal-similarity to that of the sentence (e.g., anotherspeaker vs. an everyday nonspeech sound). Participants made target word identificationand sentence sensibility judgments for each sentence they heard. The findings showedthat those with lower WMC were more likely to depend upon biasing than on acousticsignal information, but only when the signal was masked by noise. In contrast, those withhigher WMC showed less dependence upon the biasing information than those withlower WMC, even when the signal was masked by noise. Although performance acrossdistracter similarity was not influenced by WMC, the likelihood of being able toanticipate what distraction would be heard was shown to influence performance as afunction of WMC. A discussion of the role of WMC in spoken word recognition,especially during distraction, is provided and the potential mechanisms involved in thisprocess are considered.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor dc:publisher

The Ohio State University

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Szostak, Christine

Contributors dc:contributor

• Mark, Pitt

• Acoustics
• Behaviorial Sciences
• Cognitive Psychology
• Experimental Psychology
• Language
• Linguistics
• Psychology
• spoken word recognition
• working memory capacity
• subsequent context
• dichotic listening
• individual differences

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1365177772

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:etd.ohiolink.edu:osu1365177772