Adults’ (in)sensitivity to vowel distribution information

Previous linguistic knowledge modulates speech perception. One type of such knowledge is the permissible combinations of sounds into meaningful units in a language. Word recognition and speech segmentation are affected by phonotactic restrictions. However, these are localized phenomena. We investigated if adults are able to extract phonotactic-related regularities above word level, when presented with lists of words that mimic, or not, the vowel distribution of their native language. Previous research with 4.5-month-old infants, before word-level phonotactics has been reported, has shown that they are sensitive to this type of cue. The present results uncovered a different pattern of results as adults seem to rely on word-level combinations rather than list-level information.