Available online 14 November 2015Spoken language requires individuals to both perceive and produce speech. Because both
processes access lexical and sublexical representations, it is commonly assumed that perception
and production involve cooperative processes. However, few studies have directly
examined the nature of the relationship between the two modalities, particularly how producing
speech influences speech perception. In a series of experiments, we examine the
counter-intuitive finding that learning perceptual representations can be disrupted by producing
tokens during training. We investigate whether this disruption can be alleviated by
prior experience with the speech sounds, and whether the cause of the disruption is production
of the particular sound being learned, or is a more general conflict between the
production system and the system that develops new perceptual representations. Our
results paint a more competitive relationship between perception and production than
might be assumed and suggest that both demands inherent to production and cognitive
demands modulate this relationship
