Abstract
Classic research on the perception of speech sought to identify minimal acoustic correlates of each consonant and vowel. In explaining perception, this view designated momentary components of an acoustic spectrum as cues to the recognition of elementary phonemes. This conceptualization of speech perception is untenable given the findings of phonetic sensitivity to modulation independent of the acoustic and auditory form of the carrier. The empirical key is provided by studies of the perceptual organization of speech, a low-level integrative function that finds and follows the sensory effects of speech amid concurrent events. These projects have shown that the perceptual organization of speech is keyed to modulation; fast; unlearned; nonsymbolic; indifferent to short-term auditory properties; and organization requires attention. The ineluctably multisensory nature of speech perception also imposes conditions that distinguish language among cognitive systems. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:213–223. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1213
Highlights
To understand an utterance, a perceiver must grasp its linguistic properties, the words, phrases and clauses, as well as the entailments of prior and looming events, spoken or not
It is sobering to note the persistence of the disposition to explain speech perception normatively, as if the resolution of phonemic properties obscured by paralinguistic and circumstantial influences were accomplished by sensitivity to distributions of sensory elements.[3,4]
Most accounts of speech perception begin with an analysis of a speech stream
Summary
A perceiver must grasp its linguistic properties, the words, phrases and clauses, as well as the entailments of prior and looming events, spoken or not. An utterance can be produced carefully or casually, and can express features of mood or motive, making the contribution of canonical phonemic form just one of the determinants of articulation This convergence of causes takes the phoneme sequence that indexes the words and gives it personal and circumstantial shape. Acknowledging that recognition by features is inadequate both theoretically and descriptively to meet the challenge of invariance and variability, such accounts present a description of the audibility of speech sounds, and do not offer an account of speech perception From this perspective, it is sobering to note the persistence of the disposition to explain speech perception normatively, as if the resolution of phonemic properties obscured by paralinguistic and circumstantial influences were accomplished by sensitivity to distributions of sensory elements.[3,4] This perennial theory of first and last resort must be false, appealing it is in its simplicity. Apart from an argument in principle, empirical work shows this clearly, motivated by the problem of perceptual organization, a fundamental aspect of speech perception that establishes the conditions requisite for the analysis of linguistic properties
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