Identification and discrimination of the relative onset time of two component tones: Implications for voicing perception in stops

Abstract

Experiments on human subjects employed a set of nonspeech tonal stimuli that differed in the relative onset time of their components. In the 1st experiment identification and discrimination functions were obtained with these signals which showed strong evidence for categorical perception; the labeling functions were sharp and consistent and the discrimination functions showed peaks and troughs which were correlated with the labeling probabilities. Other experiments provided evidence for the presence of 3 distinct categories along this nonspeech stimulus continuum which were separated by narrow regions of high discriminability. A general account of voicing perception for stops in initial position was proposed in terms of the discriminability of differences in the temporal order of the component events at onset.