Virtues and perils of an empiricist approach to speech perception

Abstract

Nearey’s “double-weak” approach [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 102, 3241–3254 (1997)] advocates a pattern-recognition model in answer to fundamental problems of speech perception. Both theoretically and empirically, there is much to recommend double-weak. However, there is some question whether this approach avoids long-standing disagreement with respect to the objects of speech perception. In addition, the descriptive power of even relatively simple empiricist models such as Nearey’s can mislead with respect to fundamental articulatory and auditory processes underlying speech perception. Here, the positive contributions are celebrated, and several cautionary observations—germane to broader questions of experience and learning—are offered.