Abstract
Natural speech can be described as an ongoing sequence of dynamic events with a certain linguistic meaning. Whatever speech perception model one prefers, undoubtedly these dynamic events have to be analyzed and interpreted by the listener. There is a substantial literature about how specific dynamic events, such as formant transitions, are labelled, identified, discriminated, memorized, masked, matched, or adapted to, in the context of speech-like stimuli. However, surprisingly little has been published about the basic properties of our hearing for analyzing and perceiving such dynamic events in the form of psychophysical stimuli. What is the just-noticeable-difference, what is the detection threshold, what is the internal dynamic spectrum? It almost seems that the use of dynamic (speech) stimuli is more common practice in electro-physiological studies (e.g. Proceedings edited by Carlson and Granstrbm, 1982) than in psychophysics. The locus theory of plosive perception, for instance, requires some form of extrapolation of formant transitions, whether or not via an innate language module which refers to articulatory gestures (Liberman and Mattingly, 1985). The model proposed by Lindblom and Studdert-Kennedy (1967) about perceptual compensation for formant frequency undershoot, implies similar perceptual capabilities.
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© 1987 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht
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Pols, L.C.W., Schouten, M.E.H. (1987). Perception of Tone, Band, and Formant Sweeps. In: Schouten, M.E.H. (eds) The Psychophysics of Speech Perception. NATO ASI Series, vol 39. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3629-4_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3629-4_18
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