An Analysis of Perceptual Confusions in Identification of Dichotically Presented CVC Syllables
Donald Shankweiler, Michael Studdert‐Kennedy · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1967
Earlier studies with synthetic speech have shown that the method of presenting pairs of competing syllables dichotically yields reliable differences in the accuracy of recognition of material presented to the left and right ears. Contrasting consonants, presented in consonant-vowel (CV) syllables as minimal pairs, are more accurately identified from the right ear than from the left. A significant right-ear advantage was not found when steady-state vowels were presented in isolation. Since there are a number of possible explanations for this difference in perception of vowels and consonants, further experiments were performed using “real speech” with vowels in syllabic context. The results were essentially the same as in the earlier experiment—consonants were significantly better identified from the right-ear channel; vowels gave no consistent lateral differences. These results point to a genuine difference in the mode of central processing of consonants and vowels. An analysis of the matrix of confusions was carried out in order to discover what feature information is retained and what is lost in listening to syllables presented dichotically.