Schedule of Events | Symposia

Effect of Modality on Categorical Speech Perception Task Performance

Poster Session F - Tuesday, April 1, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Lily Yan¹, Frances Earle; ¹University of Delaware

In speech perception research, there has been a marked increase in experimental tasks being conducted remotely, due to several benefits such as greater efficiency in recruitment and administration. With this increase, we wanted to explore the potential difference in performance on a classic perception task (categorical perception) based on administration modality. 53 monolingual English speakers aged 18-34 completed categorization tasks as a part of different larger studies. 25 came in person, and 28 were remote. Three seven-step continua were used: vowel (/a/-/e/), VOT (/d/-/t/), and color (green-blue). Participants identified randomly-presented stimuli from each continuum in a 2AFC task. To investigate categorization behavior differences, we conducted linear mixed effects models on the percentage of responses at one end of each continuum, with the interaction between continuum step and modality, and main effects of modality and step as factors. The vowel continuum included significant effects of steps 4-7, and interactions between modality and steps 4, p<.001, and 5, p=.006. The VOT continuum found significant effects of steps 3-7, and an interaction between modality and step 3, p=.01. The color continuum included significant effects of steps 4-7, with a trending interaction between modality and step 4, p=.07. All interactions were driven by a larger percentage of responses by online participants, indicating shallower categorization slopes. This suggests lower precision, which may undermine online use for investigating individual differences. For the conference presentation, we will examine the predictive value of categorization behavior on neurocognitive ability across modalities to substantiate our claims.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Audition