An AER study of stop-consonant discrimination

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore hemispheric involvement in stop-consonant discrimination. Two experimental designs were used. In the first design, averaged evoked responses (AERs) to stop-consonant-vowel (CV) syllables were combined with AERs to nonspeech stimuli, in a paradigm similar to earlier studies, and were submitted to a principal components analysis and analyses of variance. In the second design, only the CV-syllable AERs were analyzed, in the same manner. When the responses to both CV and nonspeech stimuli were included in the analysis, the results were in agreement with those of earlier studies. However, when the nonspeech-stimuli AERs were removed from the analysis, the unilateral effects observed in prior studies were not replicated. The results of this research indicate the importance of considering experimental design and task variables before generalizing AER results to speech perception. © 1987 Psychonomic Society, Inc.