[Pause perception in a speech-like signal]

The perception of syntactic (boundary marking) pause in speech-like sequences was studied as a function of duration of intervowel interval with constant and variable local tempo. It appeared that perception of pause depends on lengthening of the intervowel interval which corresponds to consonant or consonant cluster in natural speech and is independent of tempo. The quantitative parameters of a possible model of pause detecting system can be obtained from the experimental data on pause perception.