We report two psycholinguistic experiments investigating whether grouping information presented in the visuo-spatial modality influences language production – in particular, whether different visual groupings influence the prosodic groupings that speakers produce. We used a picturedescription task where three objects were grouped in different ways, and investigated whether spoken descriptions of objects that are spatially closer to each other are separated by weaker prosodic boundaries than descriptions of objects that are further apart. Our results suggest that prosodic boundary strength is influenced by the distance between objects, and that visual input influences linguistic production at the level of prosodic boundaries.
Index Terms: psycholinguistics, visual information, prosodic boundary, language perception, language production
Cite as: Holsinger, E., Li, D.C.-H., Kaiser, E., Byrd, D. (2010) Visual grouping and prosodic grouping: effects of spatial information on prosodic boundary strength. Proc. Speech Prosody 2010, paper 835
@inproceedings{holsinger10_speechprosody,
author={Edward Holsinger and David Cheng-Huan Li and Elsi Kaiser and Dani Byrd},
title={{Visual grouping and prosodic grouping: effects of spatial information on prosodic boundary strength}},
year=2010,
booktitle={Proc. Speech Prosody 2010},
pages={paper 835}
}