Abstract
Galantucci, Fowler, and Turvey (2006) have claimed that perceiving speech is perceiving gestures and that the motor system is recruited for perceiving speech. We make the counter argument that perceiving speech is not perceiving gestures, that the motor system is not recruited for perceiving speech, and that speech perception can be adequately described by a prototypical pattern recognition model, the fuzzy logical model of perception (FLMP). Empirical evidence taken as support for gesture and motor theory is reconsidered in more detail and in the framework of the FLMP. Additional theoretical and logical arguments are made to challenge gesture and motor theory.
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This work was supported in part by NSF Grant BCS-9905176, Public Health Service Grant PHS R01 DC00236, cooperative grants from the Intel Corporation and the University of California Digital Media Program, the Perlino award, and other grants from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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Massaro, D.W., Chen, T.H. The motor theory of speech perception revisited. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 15, 453–457 (2008). https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.2.453
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.2.453