Previous research has shown that listeners are better at processing talker information in their native language compared to an unfamiliar language, a phenomenon known as the language familiarity effect. Several studies have explored two mechanisms that support this effect: lexical status and phonological familiarity. Further support for the importance of phonological knowledge comes from studies showing that participants with poorer reading skills perform worse on talker processing tasks. Previous research also suggested that speech perception in individuals with poor reading skills may be task dependent, with poorer performance on identification tasks compared to discrimination tasks. In the current study, we explore talker perception while manipulating lexicality (words, nonwords) and phonotactic probability (high, low) in participants who differ in reading ability and phonological working memory using a talker discrimination task (Experiment 1) and a talker identification task (Experiment 2). Results from these experiments revealed an effect of lexical status and phonotactic probability in both the discrimination and the identification tasks. Effects of phonological working memory were found only for the identification task, where participants with higher scores identified more talkers correctly. These results suggest that listeners use both phonological and lexical information when processing talker information. The task-modulated results show that listeners with poorer phonological working memory perform worse on talker identification tasks that tap into long-term memory representations, but not on discrimination tasks that can be completed with more peripheral processing. This may suggest a more general link between phonological working memory and learning talker categories.

先前的研究表明，与不熟悉的语言相比，听众更擅长以母语处理谈话者的信息，这种现象被称为语言熟悉度效应。一些研究已经探索了支持这种效果的两种机制：词汇状态和语音熟悉度。对语音知识重要性的进一步支持来自研究表明，阅读能力较差的参与者在说话者处理任务中表现较差。先前的研究还表明，阅读能力差的人的语音感知可能与任务相关，与识别任务相比，识别任务的表现较差。在当前的研究中，我们在操纵词汇（单词、非单词）和语音概率（高、低）在使用说话者辨别任务（实验 1）和说话者识别任务（实验 2）的阅读能力和语音工作记忆不同的参与者中。这些实验的结果揭示了词汇状态和语音概率在辨别和识别任务中的影响。仅在识别任务中发现语音工作记忆的影响，其中得分较高的参与者正确识别更多说话者。这些结果表明，听者在处理谈话者信息时同时使用语音和词汇信息。任务调制的结果表明，语音工作记忆较差的听众在利用长期记忆表征的说话者识别任务中表现较差，但不适用于可以通过更多外围处理完成的辨别任务。这可能表明语音工作记忆和学习谈话者类别之间存在更普遍的联系。