Direct Perceptions of Carol Fowler's Theoretical Perspective

Carol Fowler has had a tremendous impact on the field of speech perception, in part by having people disagree with her. The disagreements arise, as they often do, from two incompatible sources: Her positions are often misunderstood and thus "disagreed" with only on the surface, and her positions are rejected because they challenge deeply held, intuitively appealing positions, without being shown to be wrong. The misunderstandings center largely on the assertion that perception is "direct." This is often taken to mean that we have access to the speaker's vocal tract by some means other than the (largely acoustic) speech signal, when, in fact, it asserts that the signal is sufficient to directly specify that production. It is unclear why this misunderstanding persists; while there are still issues to be resolved in this regard, the stance is clear. The challenge to "acoustic" theories of speech perception remains, and thus direct perception is still controversial, as it seems that acoustic theories are held by a majority of researchers. Decades' worth of evidence showing the lack of usefulness of purely acoustic properties and the coherence gained by a production perspective have not changed this situation. Some attempts at combining the two perspectives have emerged, but they largely miss the Gibsonian challenge that Fowler has espoused: Perception of speech is direct. It looks as though it will take some further decades of research and discussion to fully explore her position.