The Effects of Attention and Prior Knowledge on Perception and Misperception of Speech

Misperceptions are common in everyday conversation. Previous work shows that misperception derives from a weak neural representation of sounds that deviate from prior expectations (prediction error). Attention enhances the encoding of prediction error and supports speech perception in challenging listening conditions, suggesting that increased attentional engagement might reduce the rate of misperceptions driven by plausible yet misinformative predictions. We induced frequent misperception in a word discrimination task with degraded spoken words preceded by matching, mismatching, and partially mismatching written text, using monetary incentives to manipulate listeners’ attention. Contrary to our predictions, incentives increased misperception on partial mismatch trials but improved perceptual accuracy on match trials. Pupillometry showed that incentives loaded both proactive and reactive control, suggesting increased involvement of top-down predictive processes. We conclude that higher attentional engagement increases reliance on prior knowledge when sensory detail is insufficient, which only exacerbates prediction-induced mishearing—at least in word discrimination tasks.