Abstract
An experiment was performed to determine the effect of selective adaptation on the identification of synthetic speech sounds which varied along the phonetic dimensionplace of articulation. Adaptation with a stimulus of a particular place value led to a reduction in the number of test stimuli identified as having that place value. An identification shift was obtained even when the acoustic information specifying place value for the adapting stimulus had virtually nothing in common with the information specifying place value for any of the test stimuli. Removing the vowel portion of an adapting stimulus eliminated identification shift only when the resulting stimulus was no longer perceived as speech-like. The results indicate that at least part of the adaptation effect occurs at a site of phonetic, not merely acoustic, feature analysis.
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This research was supported in part by a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship to the author and by grants to the University of Minnesota, Center for Research in Human Learning, from the National Science Foundation (GB-35703X), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-01136), and from the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota.
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Diehl, R.L. The effect of selective adaptation on the identification of speech sounds. Perception & Psychophysics 17, 48–52 (1975). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03203996
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03203996