Citation

Samuel AG, Newport EL. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 1979; 5(3): 563-578.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1979, American Psychological Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

528959

Abstract

Three selective adaptation experiments were run, using nonspeech stimuli (music and noise) to adapt speech continua (ba.-wa. and cha.-sha.). The adaptors caused significant phoneme boundary shifts on the speech continua only when they matched in periodicity: Music stimuli adapted ba.-wa., whereas noise stimuli adapted cha.-sha.. However, such effects occurred even when the adaptors and test continua did not match in other simple acoustic cues (rise time or consonant duration). Spectral overlap of adaptors and test items was also found to be unnecessary for adaptation. The data support the existence of auditory processors sensitive to complex acoustic cues, as well as units that respond to more abstract properties. The latter are probably at a level previously thought to be phonetic. Asymmetrical adaptation was observed, arguing against an opponent-process arrangement of these units. A two-level acoustic model of the speech perception process is offered to account for the data.

Language: en