The Time Course of Interpretation in Speech Comprehension

Determining how language comprehension proceeds over time has been central to theories of human language use. Early research on the comprehension of speech in real time put special emphasis on the sequential property of speech, by assuming that the interpretation of what is said proceeds at the same rate that information in the speech signal reaches the senses. The picture that is emerging from recent work suggests a more complex process, one in which information from speech has an immediate influence while enabling later-arriving information to modulate initial hypotheses. "Right-context'' effects, in which the later portion of a spoken stimulus can affect the interpretation of an earlier portion, are pervasive and can span several syllables or words. Thus, the interpretation of a segment of speech appears to result from the accumulation of information and integration of linguistic constraints over a larger temporal window than the duration of the speech segment itself. This helps explain how human listeners can understand language so efficiently, despite massive perceptual uncertainty in the speech signal.