An individual differences approach to acoustic context effects in speech categorization

Objects and events in the sensory environment are not perceived in isolation but in the context of surrounding stimuli. This fact has been widely appreciated in the study of speech perception, as demonstrations of these context effects date back more than a half-century. For example, the spectral composition of surrounding sounds can bias categorization of later speech sounds (spectral context effects). Similarly, temporal characteristics of surrounding sounds can bias categorization of target speech sounds (temporal context effects). The literature features many individual reports of listeners experiencing these context effects, but what do these results mean across studies? If a listener exhibited a large context effect in one experiment, is that suggestive of him/her exhibiting a large context effect in a different experiment (i.e., general sensitivity to acoustic context) or not (i.e., results limited to certain stimuli / acoustic domains)? Here, I will take an individual differences approach to spectral and temporal context effects, evaluating their predictive power within and across domains, and how this might inform future work in these areas.