# Mmm whatcha say? Uncovering distal and proximal context effects in first and second-language word perception using psychophysical reverse correlation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.05515 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.05515/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 1 of its 32 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04356/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [You Sound a Little Tense: L2 Tailored Clear TTS Using Durational Vowel Properties](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.23367/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Acoustic context effects, where surrounding changes in pitch, rate or timbre influence the perception of a sound, are well documented in speech perception, but how they interact with language background remains unclear. Using a reverse-correlation approach, we systematically varied the pitch and speech rate in phrases around different pairs of vowels for second language (L2) speakers of English (/i/-/I/) and French (/u/-/y/), thus reconstructing, in a data-driven manner, the prosodic profiles that bias their perception. Testing English and French speakers (n=25), we showed that vowel perception is in fact influenced by conflicting effects from the surrounding pitch and speech rate: a congruent proximal effect 0.2s pre-target and a distal contrastive effect up to 1s before; and found that L1 and L2 speakers exhibited strikingly similar prosodic profiles in perception. We provide a novel method to investigate acoustic context effects across stimuli, timescales, and acoustic domain.