ABSTRACT
The nonhuman animal model can be deprived ofexperience with speech signals and, thus, serves as the only certain measure ofgeneral auditory contributions. In service of revealing processes central to human speech perception, data from experiments with nonhuman subjects join a greater arsenal that also includes data from human perception studies and from computational simulations. The conditions are generally well met by nonhuman systems-analogies embraced by investigators such as Liberman and Suga. The convergence between the notion of auditory discontinuities and categorical perception has been attractive to many investigators. Part of developing a better understanding of the input will take the form of more accurate sensory and neural descriptions of speech sounds as they pass through the auditory system. Instead of using nonhuman animal subjects to eliminate confounding influences of experience, nonhuman subjects can be used in ways that permit studying perceptual learning while maintaining exquisite control over experience.
