Is gating an on-line task? Evidence from naming latency data

It is concluded that both versions of the gating task are as sensitive as other on-line tasks to the real-time processes involved in spoken word recognition.

Abstract

We investigated the suitability of the gating task for studying the on-line process of spoken word recognition. To do this, we compared two different versions of the task. In one version, subjects were placed under no time constraints, and in the other, they were encouraged to respond as rapidly as possible. Target words occurred either in isolation or in various types of syntactic and semantic contexts. These different contexts had the same effect on word recognition whether subjects responded within 500 msec of fragment offset or without time constraints. We conclude that both versions of the task are as sensitive as other on-line tasks to the real-time processes involved in spoken word recognition.