Abstract:
Listeners' ability to reconstruct missing vowel information in silent-center (SC) syllables has been viewed as evidence that vowels are dynamically specified by the information in syllable transitions. In this study implicit memory techniques are used to explore the representations formed when listeners perceive SC syllables. A set of CVC words spoken by several talkers was used to create SC and full syllable stimuli. A subset of SC stimuli was presented to listeners for identification. After a variable delay listeners were tested on the complete set of full syllables, some of whose SC versions were presented in the initial phase. Other full syllables overlap with the SC set in terms of talker or token. Performance on full syllables with differing degrees of overlap between SC and full stimuli is compared across a range of delays. Facilitation on full syllable stimuli is viewed as evidence that representations of individual SC stimuli are stored in memory and accessed in later perception of full syllables.