Word Familiarity Influences in Speech Discrimination

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Abstract
There is a marked tendency for highly familiar words to be substituted for incorrectly identified stimuli. This conclusion must be qualified as follows: The comparable equivalence of stimulus and response familiarity proportions suggests that some language constraints are operative in addition to word familiarity. Response words falling outside the 10,000 most familiar make up a significant percentage (14%) of all substitutions for misidentified W-22 stimuli, independent of stimulus familiarity. The less familiar the stimulus (within the 5000 most familiar words in the language), the more likely it is to be misidentified. The less familiar the stimulus item missed, the more likely the response is to be other than in the 500 most familiar words (that is, outside the LA category). The less familiar the stimulus item missed, the more likely the response is to be outside the 10,000 most familiar words (that is, in the NL category). In the absence of additional data as to other operative factors, perhaps present discrimination tests should be revised to minimize effects of word familiarity.

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