Effects of speaker variability on processing spoken word form and meaning in short-term priming

Processing of spoken word form and meaning is separately evaluated from short-term repetition and semantic/associative priming experiments to investigate the role of speaker variability in spoken word recognition. The assumption that lexical representation and processing only involve abstract component devoid of stimulus variability is evaluated. The results from the repetition priming experiment show a robust attenuation of phonological form priming by speaker variability. However, the same effect is absent from the semantic priming experiment. These results suggest that the effect of speaker variability on processing spoken language may depend on the depth or level of processing. The time course for speaker variability cannot be confirmed from these two experiments. Different patterns arise from lexical decision and voice discrimination tasks, suggesting the influence of attention factors on speaker variability effect.