Effects of local speaking rate context on the perception of voice-onset time in initial stop consonants.

This study explored the prediction that local speaking rate context affects the perception of voice-onset time (VOT) in initial stop consonants not only for ambiguous stimuli at the category boundary, but also for good exemplars from the category center [Volaitis and Miller, J. Acoust, Soc. Am. 92, 723-735 (1992)]. Naturally produced exemplars of the voiceless phonetic category were presented in the context of syllables produced at fast or slow speaking rates in a series of perceptual tasks, including phonetic discrimination, identification, and goodness rating. The results from all three tasks revealed no effects of speaking rate context on the perception of VOT in initial stop consonants. Rather, it appears that listeners perceive longer VOTs as better exemplars of the voiceless phonetic category, irrespective of the rate context. Further, an additional condition, in which the instructions and familiarization tasks presented prior to the administration of the perceptual tests were similar to those used by Volaitis and Miller [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 92, 723-735 (1992)], revealed that the previous results may have been influenced by the experimental design.