Perceptual Processing of Variable Input in Spanish

The effects of linguistic experience on the perceptual processing and identification of phonological dialect variation were investigated in a series of psycholinguistic experiments with native speakers of Spanish from Mexico and Puerto Rico. Perceptual processing of dialect variation was assessed using bisyllabic words produced by female speakers of Mexican and Puerto Rican Spanish with a speeded naming task and a lexical decision task. The test stimuli used in all three tasks contained either a word-final /n/, a syllable-final /r/, or a syllable-final /s/. These phonological variables were chosen because they exhibit phonological variation to different degrees in the two dialects being studied here. The results from the speeded naming task and the lexical decision task show a significant main effect for phonological variable. The findings add to the growing literature on the effects of linguistic experience on the perception of variable input, as well as to the growing literature on exemplar-based models of perception and production.