There is accumulating evidence that articulatory/motor knowledge plays a role in phonetic processing, such as the recent finding that orofacial somatosensory inputs may influence phoneme categorization. We here show that somatosensory inputs also contribute at a higher level of the speech perception chain, that is, in the context of word segmentation and lexical decision. We carried out an auditory identification test using a set of French phrases consisting of a definite article "la" followed by a noun, which may be segmented differently according to the placement of accents within the phrase. Somatosensory stimulation was applied to the facial skin at various positions within the acoustic utterances corresponding to these phrases, which had been recorded with neutral accent, that is, with all syllables given similar emphasis. We found that lexical decisions reflecting word segmentation were significantly and systematically biased depending on the timing of somatosensory stimulation. This bias was not induced when somatosensory stimulation was applied to the skin other than on the face. These results provide evidence that the orofacial somatosensory system contributes to lexical perception in situations that would be disambiguated by different articulatory movements, and suggests that articulatory/motor knowledge might be involved in speech segmentation.

中文翻译：

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口腔体感输入在词汇决策中调节词的分割。

越来越多的证据表明，发音/运动知识在语音处理中起作用，例如最近的一项发现，即面部的体感输入可能会影响音素的分类。我们在这里表明，体感输入也有助于语音感知链的更高层次，即在分词和词汇决策的背景下。我们使用一组由定冠词“ la”和名词组成的法语短语进行了听觉识别测试，该法语短语可以根据短语中口音的位置进行不同的细分。在与这些短语相对应的声音发声内的各个位置，对面部皮肤进行体感刺激，这些短语已以中性口音记录，即所有音节都给予了类似的强调。我们发现，根据体感刺激的时机，反映词分段的词汇决策明显且系统地存在偏见。当将体感刺激应用于面部以外的皮肤时，不会引起这种偏见。这些结果提供了证据，在不同的发音运动会消除歧义的情况下，口腔的体感系统有助于词汇感知，并且表明发音/运动知识可能参与了语音分割。