Wayland S C, Miller J L, Volaitis L E
Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115.
J Acoust Soc Am. 1994 May;95(5 Pt 1):2694-701. doi: 10.1121/1.409838.
In the experiments reported in this paper we compared the effects of syllable-level and sentence-level speaking rate on phonetic perception. In an earlier set of experiments, we found that syllable-level rate influences the internal perceptual structure of phonetic categories [Miller and Volaitis, Percept. Psychophys. 46, 505-512 (1989); Volaitis and Miller, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 92, 723-735 (1992)]. Specifically, a change in target-syllable rate altered the location of the stimuli judged to be the best category exemplars, as well as the width of this best-exemplar range. In the present investigation, it was asked whether sentence-level rate has the same influence. It was found that slowing sentence rate shifted the location of the best-exemplar range, but did not alter its width. These findings are discussed in terms of timing mechanisms that may operate during speech perception.
