Signal- and Listener- Based Factors in Complex Auditory Pattern Perception

Abstract

Abstract : The research project was designed to delineate principles that underlie the perception of complex auditory patterns. During the granting period, nine lines of research were conducted that investigated various aspects of complex auditory perception. These research efforts largely focused on perception of speech sounds, and provided important information about three aspects of perception. Several of the projects clarified the role that the listener's knowledge of English words can play in decoding speech. Additional studies examined how lower-level representations (spectral patterns, high- frequency sublexical patterns) are processed. Across a number of the research efforts, attentional effects were investigated, to determine how they modulate other processing. Collectively, the research effort made significant progress in clarifying how human listeners decode very complex sounds.