Dialect exposure and auditory priming for allophones

In this study, I examined how listeners' exposure to allophonic variation for two linguistic variables, /ai æ/, affected their lexical decision behaviors in an immediate auditory priming task. I analyzed data from listeners with more and less exposure to allophonic variation for each linguistic variable. I expected that listeners with more exposure to allophonic variation for a linguistic variable would be primed less by prime–target pairs with mismatching allophones than with prime–target pairs with matching allophones as compared to listeners with less exposure to allophonic variation. That is, I predicted that exposure to allophonic variation would influence listeners' lexical representations. A statistical analysis of response times revealed no priming had occurred in this task, potentially related to the nature of the stimuli. I discuss how these results could shape future studies of allophonic priming.