Abstract During speech processing, listeners must map a fundamentally continuous acoustic signal onto discrete symbols, such as words. A current debate concerns the time-course over which sub-phonemic (i.e., gradient) acoustic information continues to influence symbolic (i.e., linguistic) interpretation, which can provide evidence regarding the level of representation at which gradient information is maintained. In a visual-world paradigm experiment, participants indicated whether a spoken sentence matched a display while eye-gaze was monitored. Participants heard an acoustically ambiguous stimulus (a pronoun referring to either a male or female referent in the display), which was not disambiguated until later in the discourse. The acoustic properties of the pronouns and length of the ambiguous period were varied while responses and eye-movements to the discourse-relevant items were recorded, providing a measure of whether gradient referential uncertainty is maintained over time. Fixation patterns during the ambiguous period and latencies to fixate the target at the end of the trial varied linearly with the acoustics of the earlier pronoun, indicating that gradient information can be maintained over intervening periods of 35 syllables. These results provide strong evidence that gradient uncertainty is maintained at the level of referent representations.

中文翻译：

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口语处理过程中所指对象的持久梯度激活

摘要 在语音处理过程中，听者必须将基本连续的声学信号映射到离散符号上，例如单词。当前的争论涉及亚音位（即梯度）声学信息继续影响符号（即语言）解释的时间过程，这可以提供关于保持梯度信息的表示水平的证据。在视觉世界范式实验中，参与者在监视眼睛凝视时指出口语句子是否与显示相匹配。参与者听到了一个声学上模棱两可的刺激（代词指代显示中的男性或女性所指对象），直到话语后期才消除歧义。在记录对话语相关项目的反应和眼动时，代词的声学特性和歧义时期的长度会发生变化，从而衡量梯度参考不确定性是否随时间保持不变。模棱两可期间的注视模式和试验结束时注视目标的延迟随早期代词的声学线性变化，表明梯度信息可以在 35 个音节的间隔期间保持。这些结果提供了强有力的证据，表明梯度不确定性保持在参考表示的水平。模棱两可期间的注视模式和试验结束时注视目标的延迟随早期代词的声学线性变化，表明梯度信息可以在 35 个音节的间隔期间保持。这些结果提供了强有力的证据，表明梯度不确定性保持在参考表示的水平。模棱两可期间的注视模式和试验结束时注视目标的延迟随早期代词的声学线性变化，表明梯度信息可以在 35 个音节的间隔期间保持。这些结果提供了强有力的证据，表明梯度不确定性保持在所指表示的水平。