Response times in the morphological context were faster than in the consonantal context but slower than in the syllabic context, and did not differ significantly from either. The time-course of lexical involvement McQuee n, Norris and Cutle r examined how the influence of lexical knowledge on phonetic decisions changes over time. A second experiment tested whether listeners would still use lexical knowledge under severe time pressure. They were asked to respond before a tone, presented 500 msec after fricative offset. The results replicated the first experiment.
Lexical knowledge appears to be used in phonemic decision-making only within a limited time frame.
These findings will be used to define further the Merge model's account of perceptual decision-making. This effect was strongest in listeners' fastest responses. A weak bias was found in the subjects' slowest responses. If the biasing information arrives either too early or too late, it appears not to influence categorization decisions. Hierarchical processes Phonetic decision-making is influenced not only by lexical and sentential contexts but also by phonetic context.