ABSTRACT
The speech mode is thought to be a peculiar manner of perceiving, uniquely geared to the extraction of linguistic features from the acoustic signal. Results from several different experimental paradigms were thought to converge on the psychological reality of the speech mode and on the auditory-phonetic distinction. All of these results, however, occur for musical sounds identified as plucked or bowed notes from a stringed instrument. Thus, at present there appears to be no empirical evidence for the existence of a special speech mode for processing linguistic features. The concepts of a speech mode and an auditory-phonetic distinction should be reexamined. This paper takes a small step in that direction.
