On the relationship between vowel and consonant identification when cued by the same acoustic information

Abstract

When listening to speech, do we recognize syllables or phonemes? Information concerning the organization of the decisions involved in identifying a syllable may be elicited by allowing separate phonetic decisions regarding the vowel and consonant constituents to be controlled by the same acoustic information and by looking for evidence of interaction between these decisions. The duration and first formant frequency of the steady-state vocalic segment in synthesized consonant-vowel-consonant syllables were varied to result in responses of /bεd/, /bæd/, /bεt/, and /bæt/. The fact that the duration of the steady-state segment controls both decisions implies that that segment must be included in its entirety in the signal intervals on which the two decisions are based. For most subjects, no further significant interaction between the vocalic and consonantal decision is found beyond the fact that they are both affected by changes in the duration parameter. A model of two separate and independent phonetic decisions based on overlapping ranges of the signal adequately accounts for these data, and no explicit syllable level recognition needs to be introduced. © 1978 Psychonomic Society, Inc.