Do They Know It's Christmash? Lexical Knowledge Directly Impacts Speech Perception

Abstract

We recently reported strong, replicable (i.e., replicated) evidence for lexically mediated compensa-tion for coarticulation (LCfC; Luthra et al., 2021), whereby lexical knowledge influences a prelexicalprocess. Critically, evidence for LCfC provides robust support for interactive models of cognition thatinclude top-down feedback and is inconsistent with autonomous models that allow only feedforwardprocessing. McQueen, Jesse, and Mitterer (2023) offer five counter-arguments against our interpreta-tion; we respond to each of those arguments here and conclude that top-down feedback provides themost parsimonious explanation of extant data.