Abstract
We carried out a speech perception experiment using an eye-tracking design to test Houstonians' implicit knowledge of Houston Anglo females' participation in the PEN-PIN merger. Participants heard words containing pre-nasal /e/ or /i/ (e.g. rent) spoken by females of different perceived ages. Temporary eye movements to a cohort competitor (e.g. rinse) provided a measure of listeners' readiness to assume that the speaker may have a merged production system. Our results generally corroborate recent production surveys in Houston, but the age distribution is slightly shifted in perception relative to production. We suggest that this discrepancy is due to the particular demographic history of Houston.