Hilger, A., Cole, J., Larson, C. 2022. Semantic focus mediates pitch auditory feedback control in phrasal prosody. Language Cognition & Neuroscience, 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2022.2116060
This study investigated the effect of semantic focus on pitch auditory feedback control in the production of phrasal prosody through an experiment using pitch-shifted auditory feedback. We hypothesized that pitch-shift responses would be mediated by semantic focus because highly informative focus types, such as corrective focus, impose more specific constraints on the prosodic form of a phrase and require greater consistency in the production of pitch excursions compared to sentences with no such focus elements. Twenty-eight participants produced sentences with and without corrective focus while their auditory feedback was briefly and unexpectedly perturbed in pitch by +/−200 cents at the start of the sentence. The magnitude and latency of the reflexive pitch-shift responses were measured as a reflection of auditory feedback control. Our results matched our prediction that corrective focus would elicit larger pitch-shift responses, supporting our hypothesis that auditory feedback control is mediated by semantic focus.