Abstract
Discrimination of speech sounds from three computer-generated continua that ranged from voiced to voiceless syllables (/ba-pa/, /da-ta/, and ga-ha/ was tested with three macaques. The stimuli on each continuum varied in voice-onset time (VOT). Paris of stimuli that were equally different in VOT were chosen such that they were either within-category pairs (syllables given the same phonetic label by human listeners) or between-category paks (syllables given different phonetic labels by human listeners). Results demonstrated that discrimination performance was always best for between-category pairs of stimuli, thus replicating the “phoneme boundary effect” seen in adult listeners and in human infants as young as I month of age. The findings are discussed in terms of their specific impact on accounts of voicing perception in human listeners and in terms of their impact on discussions of the evolution of language.
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1. Miller, J. L., & Eimas, P. D.Contextual perception of voicing by infants. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Boston, April 1981.
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This research was supported by a grant to P. K. Kuhl from the National Science Foundation (BNS 8022492).
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Kuhl, P.K., Padden, D.M. Enhanced discriminability at the phonetic boundaries for the voicing feature in macaques. Perception & Psychophysics 32, 542–550 (1982). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03204208
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03204208