Making the (auditory) scene with speech

On the perceptual organization of speech.

“…The pertinent antecedent to our account of perceptual organization is a description by Mattingly and Liberman (1990) of the phonetic module, an autonomous perceptual resource independent of the functions of scene analysis and potentially preemptive of the open systems mediating the auditory recognition of objects. We grant that the findings of the three studies reported here add weight to the claim of independence of phonetic perception from other auditory functions, for in every case of sinusoidal presentation, our listeners heard multiple tones, each a distinct sound source, whereas phonetic fusion resulted in impressions of a single source of consonants and vowels (see Remez, Pardo, & Rubin, 1993). Moreover, our findings are consistent with the early separation of speech perception from auditory perception, warranted in the modular account.…”

“…With this step, we join a lively debate about the nature of speech perception that has drawn evidence from biology, engineering, linguistics, neurology, philosophy, and psychology (Mattingly & Studdert-Kennedy, 1991). We grant that the findings of the three studies reported here add weight to the claim of independence of phonetic perception from other auditory functions, for in every case of sinusoidal presentation, our listeners heard multiple tones, each a distinct sound source, whereas phonetic fusion resulted in impressions of a single source of consonants and vowels (see Remez, Pardo, & Rubin, 1993). We grant that the findings of the three studies reported here add weight to the claim of independence of phonetic perception from other auditory functions, for in every case of sinusoidal presentation, our listeners heard multiple tones, each a distinct sound source, whereas phonetic fusion resulted in impressions of a single source of consonants and vowels (see Remez, Pardo, & Rubin, 1993).…”