General Auditory Processes Contribute to Perceptual Accommodation of Coarticulation

作者：Lori L. Holt, Keith R. Kluender · 发表于：Phonetica · 年份：2000 · DOI：10.1159/000028470 · 被引用次数：67 · 研究领域：Phonetics and Phonology Research、Speech and Audio Processing、Hearing Loss and Rehabilitation

The ability of listeners to recover speech information, despite dramatic articulatory and acoustic assimilation between adjacent speech sounds, is remarkable and central to understanding perception of fluent speech. Lindblom [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 35: 1773-1781, 1963] shared with the field some of the most compelling early descriptions of the acoustic effects of coarticulation, and with Studdert-Kennedy [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 42: 830-843, 1967] provided perceptual data that remain central to theorization about processes for perceiving coarticulated speech. In years that followed, hypotheses by others that have intended to explain the ability to maintain perceptual constancy despite coarticulation have relied in some way or another upon relatively detailed reference to speech articulation. A number of new findings are reported here that suggest general auditory processes, not at all specific to speech, contribute significantly to perceptual accommodation of coarticulation. Studies using nonspeech flanking energy, capturing minimal spectral aspects of speech, suggest simple processes (that can be portrayed as contrastive) serve to 'undo' assimilative effects of coarticulation. Data from nonhuman animal subjects suggest broad generality of these processes. At a more mechanistic explanatory level, psychoacoustic and neurophysiological data suggestive of underlying sensory and neural mechanisms are presented. Lindblom and Studdert-Kennedy's early hypotheses about the potential for suc...