Categories in speech perception and production: How closely are they related?

Abstract

A large body of research shows that fine phonetic details are not only used by listeners in processing speech (e.g., McMurray et al., 2009), but these details also affect listeners’ subsequent speech productions (e.g., Goldinger, 1998), suggesting a robust link between speech perception and production. However, evidence for a direct perception-production link is mixed, and the relationship between categories in perception and production is largely unknown. Newman (2003) found correlation between a perceptual prototype and mean VOT production for /pa/, while there were no production-perception correlations for other stop consonants. Nielsen (2021) found that perceptual boundaries in VOT vary widely across speakers, but that there is no apparent link between categorical boundary in perception of voicing contrast ([p]-[b]) and production variables of isolated speech (e.g., mean VOT for /p/ or /b/, the center of gap between two categories, the distance between the two category means), confirming Bailey and Haggard (1973). The current study further explores the relationship between perception and production categories by examining categorical boundaries of English stops using minimal pairs (e.g., pear-bear), their perceptual prototypes through a goodness rating task, and production variables in connected and isolated speech.