Role of articulation in speech perception: clues from production

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Science
• Linguistics
• Auditory Neuroscience

Background:

• Speech perception research traditionally focuses on signal properties.
• The role of nonsignal information and listener-specific factors is increasingly recognized.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the interplay between signal properties and nonsignal information in speech perception.
• To challenge the notion that phonetic perception is a direct, knowledge-innocent decoding of the acoustic signal.
• To explore the function of speech signals in light of adaptive speech production.

Main Methods:

• Review of existing evidence from speech perception and production studies.
• Theoretical analysis of the relationship between acoustic signals, articulatory processes, and listener perception.
• Examination of the concept of phonetic invariants.

Main Results:

• Phonetic percepts are influenced by listener-dependent adaptations and multimodal information, not solely by raw acoustic data.
• Speech production is adaptively organized, suggesting signals supplement, rather than encode, invariant information.
• Evidence questions the necessity of intermediate articulatory representations in speech perception.

Conclusions:

• Phonetic signals are not simple acoustic invariants but are shaped by listener-specific adaptations.
• The speech signal acts as a supplement to a listener's existing processing system.
• Listener-dependent transformations of speech patterns are principled and interpretable.