This paper reviews the basic aspects of auditory processing that play a role in the perception of speech. The frequency selectivity of the auditory system, as measured using masking experiments, is described and used to derive the internal representation of the spectrum (the excitation pattern) of speech sounds. The perception of timbre and distinctions in quality between vowels are related to ...

Looking at speech perception from a sociolinguistic perspective, the paper first explores how speakers from three different regions in the U.S. perform on a vowel identification task for a continuum between /e/ and /e/. Following the general analysis of cross-regional perception, we turn our focus to a subsample of Southern participants who also provided speech data, investigating the nature of...

This study aims to test a prediction of recent theoretical frameworks in speech motor control: if speech production targets are specified in auditory terms, people with better auditory acuity should have more precise speech targets. To investigate this, we had participants perform speech perception and production tasks in a counterbalanced order. To assess speech perception acuity, we used an a...