ABSTRACT
Speech perception can be defined as the perceptual and cognitive processes leading to the discrimination, identification, and interpretation of speech signals. This chapter focusses on the processing of speech sounds, as well as suprasegmental (prosodic) features, and presents the methods used to investigate the listeners’ perceptual behaviour and the neural basis underlying such behaviour. After exposing some characteristics of the auditory signal-making speech perception challenging, the chapter provides a description of the most common behavioural methods that are traditionally used in speech perception (i.e., identification, discrimination, ratings) as well as neurophysiological techniques (i.e., EEG, fMRI). Then, the use of these behavioural and neurophysiological techniques is illustrated by presenting three studies dealing with the perception of segmental features (i.e., vowels, voice onset time) and suprasegmental cues (i.e., lexical stress).
