Incremental Processing in a Non-Speech Domain

Incremental processing is the process of using auditory information as it unfolds over time. It has been well established within known and novel words but has not been examined in non-speech domains. Tone sequences were used to examine incremental processing in a non-speech domain. Novel pseudo-word served as a control. Participants were trained to map tone sequences or pseudo-words to novel objects, and then they underwent testing trials using eye-tracking in the visual world paradigm to evaluate the degree to which they processed incrementally. Results showed increased fixation proportions to the referents of words sharing onset phonemes compared to the unrelated items indicating people were accessing potential interpretations from the very beginning of the word. This was not observed with the tone sequences. This suggests incremental processing in the pseudo-words and no incremental processing in the tone sequences.