A COMPARISON OF FORWARD VERSUS BACKWARD CONTEXT EFFECT IN PHONETIC AND NON-PHONETIC JUDGMENTS ON SYNTHETIC VOWELS

Abstract

The present study was conducted to investigate the distinction between forward and backward context effects. Two stimulus continua of synthetic vowels, one being phonetic (/u/vs./a/) and the other being non-phonetic (high vs. low in pitch), were adopted for comparison. The magnitude of the context effect was expressed by the amount of shift of boundaries in the categorical judgment for the target stimulus incurred by the context. The results indicated that the relation between forward and backward context effects in phonetic judgment is quite different from that in non-phonetic judgment. A model of the information-processing stages is presented to account for the results.