| Abstract | Investigated whether syllables or phonemes are recognized when listening to speech. Information concerning the organization of the decisions involved in identifying a syllable may be elicited by allowing separate phonetic decisions regarding the vowel and consonant constituents to be controlled by the same acoustic information and by looking for evidence of interaction between these decisions. In the 2 present studies with a total of 19 Subjects, the duration and 1st formant frequency of the steady-state vocalic segment in synthesized CVC syllables were varied to result in
responses of /bepsilond/, /baed/, /bepsilont/, and /baet/. The fact that the duration of the steady-state segment controls both decisions implies that that segment must be included in its entirety in the signal intervals on which the 2 decisions are based. For most Subjects, no further significant interaction between the vocalic and consonantal decision was found beyond the fact that they were both affected by changes in the duration parameter. A model of 2 separate and independent phonetic decisions based on overlapping ranges of the signal adequately accounts for these data; no explicit syllable level recognition needs to be introduced. |
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