Gating

This summary sheet presents the gating paradigm as it is used in spoken word recognition research. In this task, a spoken language stimulus is presented in segments of increasing duration and subjects are asked to propose the word being presented and to give a confidence rating after each segment. The dependent variables are the isolation point of the word, the confidence ratings at various points in time and the word candidates proposed after each segment. Different variants of the task are presented, as are the main effects that have been found or confirmed with it. The advantages and the problems associated with the task are discussed, and the studies that have used it with special populations are mentioned.