Facial posture as a phonetic prime for memory retrieval

Facial postures influence the perception of speech towards sounds with similar motor configurations [Yeung and Scott, J. Exper. Psych. 150, 983 (2021)]. However, it remains unknown whether facial posture can serve as a phonetic prime for the recall of speech. The present study tests whether maintaining a smile improves the recall of speech sounds with similar kinematics and somatosensory input (e.g., high front vowel /i/) [Ogane etal., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 148, EL279–EL284 (2020)]. In the training phase, a list of monosyllabic words containing /i/, /a/, and /u/ vowels is presented aurally to participants maintaining a neutral expression. In the recall phase, participants are asked to recall these words in one of two conditions, maintaining either a smile or a neutral expression. Improved recall for tokens containing /i/ would suggest facial postures act as phonetic primes for memory retrieval. The experiment is ongoing; results will be presented and discussed. [Work by the NIH and NSERC].