Reiko Mazuka
RIKEN Brain Sciences Institute (Saitama, Japan)
Duke University (Durham, NC)
Since Dupoux et al (1999) reported that Japanese native speakers have difficulty discriminating words such as "ebzo" from "ebuzo," many studies have been conducted to explain the mechanisms of the effect. In this talk, I will report results from a series of cross-linguistic experiments with Japanese and Spanish speakers, and show that the appearance of the "illusionary vowel" effect is dependent on what the perceiver is paying attention to, and can be completely eliminated by providing the subject with a prior task to pay attention to phonetic details. The results show that the "illusionary vowel" effect is caused by phonological-level processing, not by lower-level auditory processing.
Reception to follow in 1413 Marie Mount Hall.