Ganong effects for frequency may not be robust

Abstract

The Ganong effect - more identifications of a certain phoneme in a context where that phoneme would yield a real word than a context where that phoneme would yield a pseudoword - has been widely replicated. Few studies, however, have tested whether this effect occurs for frequency contrasts. In the present study, participants' likelihood of identifying an ambiguous sound as aspirated was tested in acoustically identical continua in contexts where the identification of the sound as aspirated would either yield a lower- or higher-frequency word than the identification of the sound as unaspirated would. No frequency-based Ganong effect was found.