ABSTRACT
The study of speech perception, like the study of visual or auditory perception, is ultimately concerned with a small number of basic issues. These include discovering the critical perceptual experiences of listeners and the invariant information in the speech waveform that signals these percepts, or if the latter cannot be achieved, at least cataloging the sufficient information for each percept and determining how perceptual constancy is achieved. In addition, there is the matter of developing a theory of speech perception that can explain the transduction of an acoustic signal into the perceived experience of speech. Of particular relevance for theories of speech perception has been a determination of the extent to which the mechanisms responsible for the perception of speech are species-specific adaptations that evolved for the sole purpose of processing speech. Finally, there is the concern with the developmental course of speech perception. In the past decade this endeavor has centered almost exclusively on investigating the processing abilities of very young, prearticulate infants. The latter has undoubtedly been the result of a number of factors, for example, our inherent curiosity about the initial states of the human organism, a greater acceptance of biological determinants of human behavior in recent decades, and a belief by many that investigations of relatively simple systems may yield special insights into the nature of perception.
