The purpose of this study was (1) to determine the effect of coarticulation on the perception of consonant and vowel features and (2) to compare the magnitude of R to L and L to R coarticulatory effects. Separated portions of CV, VC, VCV and CVC utterances were presented binaurally through earphones to 45 subjects to identify the deleted preceding or following sound. For adjacent consonant and vowel identification, the following were the response choices : consonant place of articulation—/p, t, k/, /b, d, g/, /f, s, ∫/, /v, z/ or /m, n/; consonant voicing—/p, b/, /t, d/, /k, g/, /f, v/ or /s, z/; consonant manner—/b, v, m/ or /d, z, n/; vowel height— /u, o, ɔ/; vowel tongue advancement—/i, ð, u/. The major findings were: (1) subjects determined the place, voicing and manner of articulation features of consonants from vowels; (2) subjects determined the tongue height and tongue advancement features of vowels from consonants; and (3) subjects determined features of vowels and consonants more correctly from preceding sounds than from following sounds. These findings provide the basis for the following conclusions: (1) coarticulatory effects are perceived and may be used by listeners to help identify adjacent sounds in conversational speech; (2) adjacent phoneme perception involves parallel processing of features; and (3) directional influence, rather than the cohesiveness of the CV articulatory unit, is the major factor in the perception of coarticulation.