The Perception of Timing in Natural Speech I: Compensation Within the Syllable

Abstract

It has been shown that errors in the timing of one phoneme in natural speech tend to be compensated in the next phoneme. The experiments reported here looked for similar effects in perception. Just-noticeable-differences were measured for increases and decreases in the duration of a [p]-closure in a naturally produced sentence. The measurements were made on two versions of the sentence that were identical except for the duration of the stressed vowel that followed the [p]-closure. A 50 msec. change in the duration of the vowel produced no compensatory change in the preferred duration of the [p]-closure.