In two experiments ten adults were required to discriminate between synthetic speech stimuli varying in voice onset time. The stimuli included labial and velar stops. The data, analysed, using ANOVA and post hoc comparison techniques, indicated that while adult phoneme perception was categorical, it was also asymmetrical. Discrimination of VOT changes from voiceless to voiced stimuli was significantly better than detection of voiced to voiceless changes. The data are interpreted as supporting a theory that VOT perception is mediated by a dual feature detector mechanism.
Abramson, A.S. and Lisker, L. ( 1970). Discriminability along the voicing continuum: crosslanguage tests. Proc. 6th Int. Congr. Phonetic Sci. (Prague) , 569-73.
3.
Butterfield, E.C. and Cairns, C.F. ( 1974). Whether infants perceive linguistically is uncertain, and if they did, its importance would be equivocal. In R. L. Schiefelbusch and L. I. Lloyd (eds.), Language Perspectives-Acquisition, Retardation and Intervention (Baltimore), 75-102.
4.
Eimas, P.D., Cooper, W.E. and Corbit, J.D. ( 1973). Some properties of linguistic feature detectors . Percep. Psychophys., 13, 247-52.
5.
Eimas, P.D. and Corbit, J.D. ( 1973). Selective adaptation of linguistic feature detectors . Cognitive Psychology, 4, 99-109.
6.
Eimas, P.D., Siqueland, E.R., Jusczyk, P. and Vigorito, J. ( 1971). Speech perception in infants. Science , 171, 303-6.
7.
Liberman, A.M., Cooper, F.S., Shankweiler, D.D. and Studdert-Kennedy, M. ( 1967). Perception of the speech code. Psychol. Rev., 74, 431-61.
8.
Liberman, A.M., Harris, K.S., Hoffman, H.S. and Griffith, B.C. ( 1957). The discrimination of speech sounds within and across phoneme boundaries. 7. exp. Psychol., 54, 358-68.
9.
Lisker, L. and Abramson, A.S. ( 1964). A cross-language study of voicing in initial stops: acoustical measurements. Word, 20, 384-422.
10.
Lisker, L. and Abramson, A.S. ( 1965). Stop categorization and voice onset time. Proc. 5th Int. Congr. Phonetic Sci. (Basel), 389-91.
11.
Lisker, L. and Abramson, A.S. ( 1967). Some effects of context on voice onset time in English stops. Lang. Speech, 10, 1-28.
12.
Lisker, L. and Abramson, A.S. ( 1970). The voicing dimension: some experiments in comparative phonetics. Proc. 6th Int. Congr. Phonetic Sci. (Prague), 563-67.
13.
Morse, P.A. ( 1971). Speech perception in six week old infants. Paper presented to meeting of Society for Research in Child Development , Minneapolis.
14.
Trehub, S.E. and Rabinovitch, M.S. ( 1972). Auditory linguistic sensitivity in early infancy . Developmental Psychology, 6, 74-7.
15.
Trehub, S.E. ( 1973). Infants' sensitivity to vowel and tonal contrasts . Developmental Psychology, 9, 91-6.
16.
Winer, B.J. ( 1962). Statistical Principles in Experimental Design (New York) .
