Individual differences in speech perception: Evidence for gradiency in the face of category-driven perceptual warping

Abstract

In contrast to the long-running debates around universally categorical vs. gradient speech perception, we find individual differences in listeners' sensitivity to subtle acoustic differences between speech sounds (within and between phoneme categories). Here, we used an EEG measure of listeners' early perceptual encoding of a primary acoustic cue and found that categorical listeners showed stronger perceptual warping around the boundary, even as sensitivity to within-category differences was present across the board.