| Abstract | Although R. L. Diehl and K. R. Kluender's (see PA, Vol 77:30010) principle of auditory enhancement extends the theory of adaptive dispersion, neither the principle nor the theory has any bearing on what is perceived as speech. All perceptual objects, including speech objects, are abstract, amodal structures made available to cognition by 1 or more sensory modalities. A focus on the modalities or media of information transfer in speech perception diverts attention from 2 aspects of speech function: perceptuomotor functional equivalence and imitation. Studies of lipreading, short-term memory, and infant behavior support the existence of an output unit, the phonetic gesture, at a level in the communication chain corresponding to the acoustic cue on the input side |
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