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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 9, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 213-229).

The purpose of this study was to record a set of Mongolian monosyllabic word lists that could be used to obtain a word recognition score. A word list was developed of 190 frequently used monosyllabic words which had been selected by a group of raters. Native male and female Mongolian talkers were utilized to make digital recordings. The 190 words were divided into 10 lists of 19 words. The lists were presented to 20 normally hearing subjects at 10 different intensity levels ranging from -5 to 40 dB HL in 5 dB increments. An S-curve distribution was used to divide the words among three lists based upon the results of the word recognition testing. Word lists were assembled formulating 3 lists of 50 words and 6 half-lists of 25 words using an S-curve distribution. Logistic regression was used to calculate the psychometric functions for each list. The mean psychometric function slopes for the male and female word lists were 6.19%/dB and 5.17%/dB respectively. The 50% threshold was 14.47 dB HL for the final adjusted male and female lists.

The aim of this study was to develop, digitally record, evaluate, and psychometrically equate a set of Spanish bisyllabic word lists to be used for word recognition testing. Frequently used bisyllabic words were selected and digitally recorded by male and female Spanish talkers. Twenty normally hearing subjects were presented each word to find the percentage of words which they could correctly recognize. Each word was measured at 10 intensity levels (-5 to 40 dB HL) in increments of 5 dB. Chisquare analysis was used to determine the equivalency among the final four psychometrically equivalent word lists of 50 words, and each of the eight half-lists containing 25 words each. The results of the analysis indicated that there were no significant differences among the four-lists or eight half-lists. Only minimal adjustments (≤0.5 dB) were needed to equate the words in the lists and half-lists for the male and female talkers.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / Humanities / Master / Master of Philosophy

The process of generating a phonological code from print is widely described as automatic. This claim is tested in Chapter 1 by assessing whether phonological recoding uses central attention in the context of the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP) paradigm. Task 1 was a tone discrimination task and Task 2 was reading aloud. Nonword letter length and grapheme-phoneme complexity yielded additive effects with SOA in Experiments 1 and 2 suggesting that <em>assembled phonology</em> uses central attention. Neighborhood density (N) yielded additive effects with SOA in Experiments 3 and 4, suggesting that one form of lexical contribution to phonological recoding also uses central attention. Taken together, the results of these experiments are <em>inconsistent</em> with the widespread claim that phonological codes are computed automatically. Chapter 2 begins by reconsidering the utility of ?automaticity? as an explanatory framework. It is argued that automaticity should be replaced by accounts that make more specific claims about how processing unfolds. Experiment 5 yielded underadditivity of long-lag word repetition priming with decreasing SOA, suggesting that an early component of the lexical contribution to phonology does not use central attention. There was no evidence of Task 1 slowing with decreasing SOA in Experiments 6 and 7, suggesting that phonological recoding processes are postponed until central attention becomes available. Theoretical development in this field (and others) will be facilitated by abandoning the idea that skilled performance inevitably means that all the underlying processes are automatic.

This dissertation investigates the cognitive relevance of Arabic morphology and diglossia in spoken word recognition. The current study asks four main questions: (1) Does Arabic morphology influence word recognition? (2) Which view of Arabic morphology (i.e., the root-based or the stem-based) has an online role in spoken word recognition? (3) Does Arabic diglossia (i.e., using colloquial Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as the dominant language of speaking and literacy, respectively) affect spoken word processing? (4) How can Arabic diglossia affect spoken word recognition? Three different lexical decision experiments and one phoneme-monitoring task were designed and conducted on a group of 140 literate native speakers of Jordanian colloquial Arabic (JCA). In the first experiment, the participant responded to MSA words varied in their surface, root, and stem frequencies. Results revealed that the token frequencies of the three tested units affected the speed of word recognition to the same extent. This suggests that both roots and stems, along with the surface words, are valid units of Arabic mental lexicon. The next two experiments compared the processing of JCA and MSA words when embedded in sentences of the same or the other variety of Arabic and when primed by intra-variety vs. cross-variety words. Results showed a lexical switching cost only when the target word is processed in the sentential context. Moreover, while the sentence experiment reported a processing advantage for MSA words relative to JCA words, the priming experiment found a processing advantage for JCA words. The priming effects were larger when the related primes were presented in JCA relative to the priming effects of the MSA primes. The fourth experiment compared phoneme monitoring of consonants and short vowels in JCA and MSA words. Results showed a detection advantage for consonants relative to short vowels and no difference between the carrier words of the two varieties of Arabic. On the whole, the last three experiments suggest that both spoken language (i.e., CA) experience and literary language (i.e., MSA) experience can affect auditory word recognition. This work emphasizes the relevance of (alphabetic) literacy and experimental task in speech processing. / February 2017