The perceptual equivalence of trading-relation cues
Hollis L. Fitch, Terry G. Halwes, Donna Erickson, Alvin M. Liberman · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1979
At an earlier meeting, we presented results of a study of the effects on phonetic identification of orthogonal variation in a temporal cue and a spectral cue that are the common acoustic products of a single phonetically significant act. Within limits, contrasting phonetic identifications could be obtained by varying either one, and the presence of an extra amount of one could compensate for the absence of the other (thus a trading relation was established). We suggested ways of pairing the cues in syllables for discrimination judgements to test whether the implied perceptual equivalence was genuine. This paper reports the results of such a test. The appropriate pairs did prove hard to discriminate. We propose that the equivalence thus demonstrated is due to a perceptual system specialized to take account of the common origin of the two cues. [Work supported by NICHD.]