INTERSPEECH 2011 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association Florence, Italy August 27-31. 2011

The Time-Course of Talker-Specificity Effects for Newly-Learned Pseudowords: Evidence for a Hybrid Model of Lexical Representation

Helen Brown, M. Gareth Gaskell

University of York, UK

Whilst research shows that talker information affects recognition of recently studied words, it remains unclear whether this information is stored in long-term memory. Three experiments explored whether talker-specificity effects (TSEs) for pseudowords changed over time and were affected by within- and between-talker variability during study. Results showed TSEs immediately after study in all experiments, consistent with episodic models, but TSEs remained a week later only for pseudowords studied in a single voice. Furthermore, source memory data suggested that talker information becomes less accessible over time, supporting hybrid models that incorporate aspects of both episodic and abstract lexical representation.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Brown, Helen / Gaskell, M. Gareth (2011): "The time-course of talker-specificity effects for newly-learned pseudowords: evidence for a hybrid model of lexical representation", In INTERSPEECH-2011, 753-756.