Abstract
Hearing has evolved in a hostile environment. Between the sound source and the ear, the different frequencies of a sound are differentially absorbed by the air, reflected by surfaces and mixed in with other sounds. Despite all these distortions and additions, the brain achieves a remarkable constancy of percept, especially in the perception of speech. If we take this ability seriously, we are led to difficult but crucial issues concerning the relationship between phonetic knowledge and the representation of sound in the auditory system. These issues never arise if we only consider the perception of speech as the perception of the sound produced by a single speaker, or synthesiser, heard in a sound-proof room, yet they are crucial in understanding the computational problem faced by hearing, and of great practical significance in constructing robust speech recognition devices or hearing aids. Speech perception — come out of the closet and join the cocktail-party!
Gardner’s salary was provided by SERC grants GR/C 8522.1 and GR/C 65930, Research facilities were provided by SERC grant GR/D 6009.9
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© 1987 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht
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Darwin, C.J., Gardner, R.B. (1987). Perceptual Separation of Speech from Concurrent Sounds. 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_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3629-4_7
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