Haskins Publications

Number	180
Year	1975
Drawer	3
Entry Date	07/09/1998
Authors	Cutting, J. E.
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Publication	Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 104, 105-120.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0180.pdf
Abstract	Notes that phonological fusion occurs when the phonemes of 2 different speech stimuli are combined into a new percept that is longer and linguistically more complex than either of the 2 inputs. For example, when "pay" is presented to one ear and "lay" to the other, the Subject often perceives "play." The present study, using a total of 185 normally hearing undergraduates in 13 experiments, investigated the conditions necessary and sufficient for fusion to occur. Results show the rules governing phonological fusion appeared to be the same for synthetic and natural speech, but synthetic stimuli fused more readily. Fusion occurred considerably more often in dichotic stimulus presentation than in binaural presentation. The phenomenon was remarkably tolerant of differences in relative onset time between the to-be-fused stimuli and of relative differences in fundamental frequency, intensity, and vocal tract configuration. Although phonological fusion was insensitive to such nonlinguistic stimulus parameters, it was sensitive to linguistic variations at the semantic, phonemic, and acoustic levels.
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