Consonant bias in adults’ lexical processing under acoustically degraded listening conditions

Consonants facilitate lexical processing across most languages. This study investigates whether acoustic degradation affects this phonological bias in a lexical decision task. French words were processed using an 8-band vocoder, degrading their frequency modulations (FM) while preserving either original amplitude modulations (AM; Experiment 1), or only the slowest AM (<16 Hz; Experiment 2). Results reveal a consonant bias in listeners’ accuracy and response times only in Experiment 1 (reduced spectral and FM information but preserved AM cues). These degraded conditions resemble current cochlear-implant processors, and attest to the robustness of the phonological bias.