ABSTRACT

Listeners perceive high or rising pitch as stressed – at the word and sentence level (high-pitch bias). Since stressed syllables can also be low-pitched, this bias may lead to misinterpretations of word and sentence stress and thus slow down speech comprehension. We investigate the effect of immediate exposure with high- vs. low-pitched stressed syllables on the identification of word and sentence stress. Participants were exposed to utterances containing only high- vs. low-pitched stressed syllables. In experimental trials, they then heard either trisyllabic words with word stress on the second syllable (Experiment 1) or three-word-sentences with sentence stress on the second word (Experiment 2) and indicated the position of word/sentence stress. Stimuli were presented in three intonation conditions (high-pitched first, second, or third syllable/word). Both experiments endorsed the high-pitch bias, with an increase after high-pitch exposure. Our results suggest a speaker-independent re-weighting of acoustic cues to stress, which is driven by experience.

摘要

听众将高音或上升音视为压力——在单词和句子级别（高音偏差）。由于重读音节也可能是低音调，这种偏见可能会导致对单词和句子重音的误解，从而减慢语音理解。我们研究了立即暴露于高音与低音重音音节对识别单词和句子重音的影响。参与者接触到仅包含高音和低音重音音节的话语。在实验试验中，他们听到第二个音节重读的三音节单词（实验1）或第二个单词重读的三字句（实验2），并指出单词/句子重读的位置。刺激以三种语调条件呈现（高音第一、第二、或第三个音节/单词）。两个实验都支持高音调偏差，在高音调暴露后有所增加。我们的结果表明，对压力的声学线索进行了独立于说话者的重新加权，这是由经验驱动的。