How the components of speaking rate influence perception of phonetic segments.

In two studies we investigated the way in which the components of speaking rate, articulation rate and pause rate, combine to influence processing of the silence-duration cue for the voicing distinction in medial stop consonants. First, we replicated the finding that the articulation rate of a carrier sentence, that is, the rate at which the speech itself is produced, influences how the duration information is used to assign voicing values. Second, and more importantly, the assignment of voicing values was also influenced by the pause rate of the sentence. Thus, the listener adjusts for both articulation rate and pause rate when processing the phonetically relevant information. Finally, the two rate components did not function in an equivalent manner, since changes in articulation rate had considerably more effect on phonetic judgments than did changes in pause rate. Alternative explanations fo the relative weighting of the two variables are discussed.