“…Thus, for example, listeners may accept longer formant transitions for [b] at slower speaking rates not because they reveal something about typical articulation, but simply because they appear shorter than longer surrounding segments, a pattern previously documented for nonspeech tone durations (Goldstone, Boardman, & Lhamon, 1959;Goldstone, Lhamon, & Boardman, 1957;Walker & Irion, 1979;Walker, Irion, & Gordon, 1981). Oller, Eilers, Miskiel, Burns, and Urbano (1991) speculated further on the precise workings of a durational contrast effect. To account for the nonlinear relation of boundary shifts and apparent rate, they introduced a "comparable range model" whereby contrast effects only occur between two sounds (e.g., a transition and following steady state) with absolute durations falling within a similar range, perhaps a 1:1 to 1:2 ratio.…”