Auditory coding, cues, and coherence in phonetic perception.
C. T. Best, M. Studdert-Kennedy, S. Manuel, and J. Rubin-Spitz (1989) reported that listeners given speech labels showed categorical-like perception of a series of complex tone analogs to a /la/-/ra/ speech series, whereas nonspeech listeners were unable to classify the stimuli consistently. In 2 experiments, a new training and testing procedure was used with adult listeners given nonspeech instructions. They classified the /la/-/ra/ tone analogs consistently, showed categorical-like perception, and generalized their training to a new, /li/-/ri/ tone analog series. Two sets of auditory attributes were described for coding the /l/-/r/ distinction, and 1 was shown to quantitatively predict listeners' classification of both series. These results are consistent with models of perception in which a rich, abstract auditory code is computed and forms the basis for both speech and nonspeech auditory categories.
Sawusch
J R
JR
Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Buffalo 14260, USA.
Gagnon
D A
DA
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001307:Auditory Perception; D005260:Female; D005795:Generalization, Stimulus; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D011930:Reaction Time; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception