Alignment of f0 peak in different pitch accent types affects perception of metrical prominence

The paper related to this dataset investigates how different pitch accent types (with different f0 alignments) modulate the processing of metrical prominence in German. Experiment 1 showed more errors in stress identification when f0 peaks and stressed syllables were misaligned – despite phonological association of pitch accent and stressed syllable. Erroneous responses revealed a bias towards the syllable with the f0 peak. In a visual-world eye- tracking study (Experiment 2), listeners fixated a stress competitor with initial stress more when the target word with penultimate stress was realized with an early-peak accent (f0 peak preceding the stressed syllable), compared to a condition with the f0 peak on the stressed syllable. Hence, high- pitched unstressed syllables are temporarily interpreted as stressed; a process that directly affects lexical activation. To investigate whether this stress competitor effect is caused by the salience of high-pitched syllables or the frequent co-occurrence of high f0 and stress, Experiment 3 increased the frequency of low-pitched stressed syllables in the immediate input. The effect of intonation on competitor fixations disappeared. Stimuli (wav-files) for all experiments are provided.