Assessing the Perception of Speech

Abstract

During the years when I was privileged to serve with Arthur Bronstein and other distinguished colleagues in the activation of the doctoral program in speech and hearing sciences at the City University of New York, I saw my area of specialization, audiology, expand in response to the mutual stimulation its practitioners enjoyed from such provocative company. From a narrow interest in the sensitivity of the ear to sound and its ability to discriminate among isolated words of limited test samples, we were alerted to the complex and multifaceted processes and influences which enter into human communication via speech. The following essay presents, in very abbreviated form, some of the questions we have been asking and some of the findings from various studies undertaken by us and by others.