Is repairing speech errors an automatic or a controlled process? Insights from the relationship between error and repair probabilities in English and Spanish

Speakers can correct their speech errors, but the mechanisms behind repairs are still unclear. Some findings, such as the speed of repairs and speakers’ occasional unawareness of them, point to an automatic repair process. This paper reports a finding that challenges a purely automatic repair process. Specifically, we show that as error rate increases, so does the proportion of repairs. Twenty highly-proficient English-Spanish bilinguals described dynamic visual events in real time (e.g. “The blue bottle disappears behind the brown curtain”) in English and Spanish blocks. Both error rates and proportion of corrected errors were higher on (a) noun phrase (NP)2 vs. NP1, and (b) word1 (adjective in English and noun in Spanish) vs. word2 within the NP. These results show a consistent relationship between error and repair probabilities, disentangled from position, compatible with a model in which greater control is recruited in error-prone situations to enhance the effectiveness of repair.

说话者能够修正自身的言语错误，但言语修正背后的运作机制仍未明晰。诸如修正速度、说话者有时甚至未意识到自身已完成修正等研究发现，均指向自动化的言语修正过程。本研究报告了一项挑战纯自动化修正过程的发现。具体而言，我们发现错误率越高，修正占比亦越高。20名英语-西班牙语高熟练度双语参与者，需在英语与西班牙语实验区块中实时描述动态视觉事件（例如：“蓝色瓶子消失在棕色窗帘后方”）。结果显示，在(a) 第二个名词短语（noun phrase, NP2）相较于第一个名词短语（NP1），以及(b) 名词短语内部的第一个词（英语中为形容词，西班牙语中为名词）相较于第二个词的情况下，其错误率与修正错误占比均更高。上述结果表明，错误概率与修正概率之间存在稳定关联，且该关联不受位置因素影响；这一结果契合如下模型：在易出错情境中，认知系统会调用更强的控制资源以提升修正效率。