Sensitivity to Sub-phonemic Variation during Lexical Identification: Evidence from Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) Goodness-ratings

This study investigates the effect of sub-phonemic variation in bilabial stop and sibilant fricative consonants on word identification. Recent research suggests that sub-phonemic variation in stop voicing contrasts influences lexical processing. The present study seeks further support for this view by examining listeners’ responses to synthetic speech varying along VOT and fricative place continua. Listeners’ responses were collected using a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) goodnessrating task, which prompts continuous rather than discrete judgments on speech input. The results demonstrate that listeners were sensitive to subphonemic variation in both types of contrasts, although they responded more continuously to the fricative continua than to the VOT continuum.