Identification times for phonemic components of graded complexity and for spelling of speech

Identification time was measured for targets in speech in terms of the number of phonemes occurring between the target and response. Auditory targets in the mam experiment were at three levels of phonetic complexity; (1) monosyllabic words or nonsense syllables, each containing four phonemes; (2) clusters (vowel + consonant) consisting of the second and third phonemes within these syllables; (3) individual phonemes within these clusters. Identification time was always shorter for (1) than for (2) or (3). The effect of semantic and grammatical context upon identification was small. Plosive consonants which did not begin a syllable generally could not be identified as isolated phonemic targets, although they could be identified readily as part of a cluster. Letter targets corresponding to the spelling of the auditory stimulus permitted identification of plosive consonants, and in general followed different rules than the phonemic targets. Additional observations concerning individual targets were made.