The Less Meaningful the Understanding, the Faster the Feeling: Speech Comprehension Changes Perceptual Speech Tempo

• DOI: 10.1111/cogs.70037
• Publication Date: 2025-02-03T14:50:21Z
• Authors: Liangjie Chen; Yangping Jin; Zhongshu Ge; Liang Li; Lingxi Lu
• Keywords: Neurocomputational speech processing

Abstract The perception of speech tempo is influenced by both the acoustic properties and cognitive state listener. However, there a lack research on how comprehension affects tempo. This study aims to disentangle impact manipulating linguistic structures measuring perceptual at explicit implicit levels. Three experiments were conducted explore these relationships. In Experiment 1, two tasks revealed that listeners tend overestimate sentences with low comprehensibility, although this effect decreased repeated exposure speech. 2, utilizing an task, replicated main findings 1. Furthermore, results from drift‐diffusion model eliminated possibility participants’ responses based type sentence. 3, non‐native Chinese speakers varying levels language proficiency completed rate task. showed exhibited distinct behavioral patterns compared native speakers, as they did not perceive differences in between high comprehensibility conditions. These highlight intricate relationship processed