Haskins Publications

Number	372
Year	1982
Drawer	7
Entry Date	06/15/1999
Authors	Repp, B. H.
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Publication	Psychological Bulletin, 92, 81-110
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0372.pdf
Abstract	This article reviews a variety of recent experimental findings that show that the perception of phonetic distinctions relies on the integration of multiple acoustic cues and is sensitive to the surrounding context in very specific ways. Most of these effects have correspondences in speech production and are readily explained by the assumption that listeners make continuous use of their tacit knowledge of speech patterns. A general auditory theory that does not make reference to the specific origin and characteristics of speech can, at best, handle only a small portion of the phenomena reviewed here. Special emphasis is placed on studies that obtained different patterns of results depending on whether the same stimuli were perceived as speech or as nonspeech. These findings provide strong empirical evidence for the existence of a speech-specific mode of perception.
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