Acoustic cues in morphological processing: The role of context in speech perception

Previous studies have shown that morphological information influences phonetic details in speech production. Seyfarth et al. (2018) demonstrated that English speakers use vowel and segment duration to distinguish between morphologically simple words (e.g., “booze") and complex words (e.g., “boos"). However, it remains unclear whether speakers can utilize acoustic cues signaling morphological information during speech perception. This study investigated whether native English speakers use these acoustic cues in perception. Forty sentences with embedded target words were recorded by native English speakers. Two types of stimuli were used: isolated target words (Experiment 1) and low-pass filtered sentences with intact target words (Experiment 2). Participants chose between morphologically simple and complex options for each stimulus. Results showed that participants performed at chance level with isolated words but could significantly distinguish between morphologically simple and complex words when given filtered sentence context. This suggests that speakers can utilize acoustic cues for morphological information, but only with sufficient acoustic context. These findings demonstrate the active use of acoustic signals in speech perception and morphological processing, offering insights into how children might process morphologically varying words.