Changes in informativity of sentential context affects its integration with subcategorical information about preceding speech.

Abstract

Spoken language understanding requires the integration of incoming speech with representations of the preceding context. How rich the information is that listeners maintain in these contextual representations has been a long-standing question. Under one view, subcategorical information about the preceding input-including any uncertainty about the underlying categories-is quickly discarded due to memory limitations. Alternative views hold that listeners maintain some subcategorical information far beyond word boundaries. This would facilitate more effective integration with subsequent context, under the assumption that subsequent context is informative about the preceding input. We thus ask whether listeners are sensitive to changes in the informativity of subsequent context by changing the expected utility of subcategorical information maintenance. In three experiments, we manipulate how informative subsequent context is about words that occur six to nine syllables earlier. We find that reduced informativity leads listeners to down-weight the importance of subsequent context. This suggests that listeners can adjust the degree to which they maintain subcategorical information. We do, however, also identify alternative interpretations that affect not only the present results but also the interpretation of previous work on subcategorical information maintenance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).