Phonetic Expectation and Transcription Validity

Abstract

Abstract This investigation presents evidence that in phonetic transcription the listener’s interpretation of the meaning of the speech signal influences how he hears it. Listeners who were asked to transcribe the same child speech sequences under two different meaning conditions changed their transcriptions when their interpretation of meaning was changed from treatment I to II. Treatment II transcriptions often included phonetic features which would be expected on the basis of the utterance meaning but were, in fact, not present in the acoustic signal. In most instances, however, knowledge of meaning helped the transcriber to improve his transcription, presumably by directing his attention to features of the signal which he had failed to notice during treatment I.