Speech perception consistency facilitates initial lexical activation, but not speech perception flexibility

Speech perception consistency refers to the similarity between a listener’s responses to repeated presentations of the same speech sound (e.g., along a /ba/–/pa/ continuum). Although research has demonstrated multiple advantages of consistency, its role in initial lexical activation (i.e., early activation of word candidates) and speech perception flexibility (e.g., the ability to recover from misleading speech input) has not been tested. We investigated the role of consistency in spoken-word recognition among Spanish (L1)–English (L2) bilingual listeners. Focusing on the bilabial stop contrast (/b/–/p/), consistency was measured in a task where participants repeatedly rated speech sounds on a continuous scale (Visual Analog Scale), whereas initial lexical activation and speech perception flexibility were assessed using a word-to-picture matching task with eye-tracking (Visual World Paradigm). Seventy Spanish–English bilinguals completed these tasks in both languages. Listeners with higher consistency exhibited stronger initial lexical activation for acoustically compatible word candidates across /b/ and /p/ in L1 Spanish and for /p/ in L2 English. However, consistency was not associated with speech perception flexibility. These findings suggest that speech perception consistency primarily supports early lexical activation during spoken-word recognition, while playing a more limited role in later processes involved in revising initial misinterpretations.