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Phonetic Biases in Voice Key Response Time Measurements☆

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Abstract

Voice response time (RT) measurements from 4 large-scale studies of oral reading of English monosyllables were analyzed for evidence that voice key measurements are biased by the leading phonemes of the response. Words with different initial phonemes did have significantly different RTs. This effect persisted after contributions of nine covariables, such as frequency, length, and spelling consistency, were factored out, as well as when variance associated with error rate was factored out. A breakdown by phoneme showed that voiceless, posterior, and obstruent consonants were detected later than others. The second phonemes of the words also had an effect on RT: Words with high or front vowels were detected later. Phoneme-based biases due to voice keys were large (range about 100 ms) and pervasive enough to cause concern in interpreting voice RT measurements. Techniques are discussed for minimizing the impact of these biases.

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    ☆

    This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant BCS-9807736. We thank the anonymous respondents to our Internet poll; Nancy Ciaparro, Kira Rodriguez, and Joe Inman for their assistance with the research; Howard Nusbaum, David Balota, Daniel Spieler, Mark Seidenberg, and Gloria Waters for sharing their data; and Christopher Kello, Stephen Lindsay, Ronald Peereman, and Kathleen Rastle for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

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    Address correspondence and reprint requests to Brett Kessler, Department of Psychology, Wayne State University, 71 W. Warren Avenue, Detroit, MI 48202. Fax: (313) 577-7636). E-mail: [email protected].

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